Foxconn wants to replace nearly every human with robots

Foxconn has been pushing into automating its manufacturing process in three of its Chinese manufacturing plants, with plans to "fully automate entire factories eventually" - according to Foxconn's Automation Technology Development Committee General Manager Dai Jia-peng, reports DigiTimes.

Dai said that in the first phase, Foxconn "aims to set up individual automated work stations for work that workers are unwilling to do or is dangerous". There will be entire production lines that will be automated, so that less robots are required for the second phase. In the third phase, Dai teased that "entire factories will be automated with only a minimal number of workers assigned for production, logistics, testing and inspection processes".

Foxconn has already deployed over 40,000 of their Foxbots, an industrial robot that was designed and made in-house by Foxconn. The company is capable of making around 10,000 of these Foxbots per year, as well as industrial robots - Foxconn is also working on medical-orientated robots. Dai added that robotics technology continues to improve, so industrial robots might not be able to completely replace human workers just yet - as human workers can easily switch from task to task, but robots can't do that... yet.