Twenty billion T-shirts are made yearly, mostly outside the U.S. It's a simple, repetitive job. Or is it that simple? At least two companies have been trying to automate the process with robots, and it's not going very well yet.
If they can set up automated factories in the U.S., it would eliminate the inefficient over-seas transport for this product to save time and cost. Right now it's worth the transport because labor to make the garment is so much cheaper in China (1/3 U.S. labor cost) or Guatemala (1/5 U.S. labor cost).
What is pretty simple for human hands to do is not simple for robots. Bottom line: maybe we underestimate what humans can do. All this AI experimentation should help us define human abilities better.
from Wired
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