Shoemaking robots come out! Can produce 600 pairs of Nike shoes in 8 hours

According to foreign media reports, the most labor-intensive procedure for making a pair of Nike shoes is to assemble the upper – when you put on the shoes, the soft part is directly above the foot. The uppers of many sneakers look like they are using a single piece of material, and the stitches and ends are not visible. But in fact, these uppers may be made up of up to 40 pieces of material. These materials are heat bonded into a single unit. At present, although robots can complete most of the process of making shoes, assembling the uppers is still beyond their capabilities. Therefore, this procedure is done by the workers.

However, robots will soon seize the jobs of these workers. Four years ago, Nike invested in a startup called Grabit. The Sun Valley, California-based company uses electrostatic adsorption to let machines manipulate objects. Nike has recently become one of the company's first customers.

Last month, Grabit supplied several shoe assembly machines to the Nike shoe factory. These assembly machines work 20 times faster than workers. At the end of this year, Nike factories in China and Mexico will also be equipped with more than 10 such machines. Nike is trying to change the shoe industry's reliance on large labor, moving manufacturing plants closer to the big consumer markets in the US and Europe.

Currently, almost every company that produces physical goods is interested in automation. For example, the automotive industry has used robotic arms to replace part of the labor force for many years; Amazon holds a robotic competition every year to select the robot that can most flexibly grab objects. For Grabit, the cooperation with Nike shows that its products have attracted the attention of well-known apparel manufacturers around the world.

Although Grabit literally means "grab it," the innovation of this company is not to let robots learn to mimic human capture. This company uses panels made up of electrodes. These electrodes, when energized, produce an absorbing force that attracts almost any planar object close to them. Graget's chief executive, Greg Miller, said that this allowed Grabit's robots to do what the robotic arm could never do.

The idea of ​​the Grabit robot comes from the well-known non-profit research institute SRI in Menlo Park, California. Harsha Prahlad, founder and chief technology and product officer at Grabit, previously researched wall-climbing robots at SRI, and later discovered that the real opportunities are in manufacturing and logistics. So in 2013, he made Grabit independent from SRI and became a new company. Grabit has received $2.5 million in financing, including electronics manufacturer Flex, apparel maker Esquel and South Korea's Samsung. Prarad has more than 30 patents related to electrostatic attraction.

Grabit's shoe-making robot looks like an oversized sandwich machine. They can work with workers to get the job done together. The software first determines how to stack the materials used to make the vamp, and then lets the light illuminate certain parts of the glass table, instructing the worker to place the material in these locations. Next, a platform covered by the electrostatic adsorption panel is lowered, the materials are sucked, and transferred to the partially finished shoes, the power of the electrodes is turned off, the upper material is placed in a suitable position, and finally all the materials are sent. Into the hot press. It takes 10 to 20 minutes for workers to finish the upper material, and Grabit's robots can do the same job in 50 to 70 seconds. During an eight-hour shift, a robot monitored by a worker can make between 300 and 600 pairs of shoes.

According to data provided by Nike, the company employs 591 factories worldwide and employs more than 1 million workers. Its production relies heavily on the cheap labor market in Asia. Nike hopes to shift production to the US and Europe. The company first established an advanced production technology R&D department in Oregon. In 2015, Nike announced a partnership with its manufacturing partner Flex to develop new technologies. Nike's chief operating officer, Eric Sprunk, said in an e-mail that Grabit "strategically fits Nike's efforts to advance advanced manufacturing technologies." Nike's main competitor, For example, Adidas and An Dema have also set similar goals and are developing their own advanced manufacturing technologies.

Automation is one of the important factors that influence Nike's plan to move the plant back to the US. Nike has set up 49 factories in the United States, averaging 130 workers per factory – Nike employs 1,300 workers per factory in China. Nike's US factory specializes in high-tech air cushions rather than completing the entire process of making shoes. Greg Miller believes that while handing over work to an automated factory may cause some workers to be laid off, more efficient production plants will create better jobs for these workers.

Dan Kara, director of research in the robotics, automation and intelligent systems division of ABI Research, a technology market intelligence company, said that robots are expensive and flat, and are not yet suitable for mass production. Driven by economic interests, technology continues to develop, and the balance between human and machine labor will be broken. Carla said: "This is a huge market, a market that has not been fully exploited. Under economic pressure, manufacturers want production to become more efficient."

Grabit said that for robot manufacturers, the apparel industry alone is a huge market with a size of $2 million to $3 million. A robot sells for more than $100,000, and customers also pay for software services, and they need to periodically replace the electrostatic adsorption panel.

According to Jim Kim of venture capital firm Builers VC, the e-commerce industry can bring greater opportunities to Grabit than the apparel industry. Grabit's electrostatic adsorption conveyors operate on steep slopes and hold the boxes securely, preventing them from falling to the ground. After the box arrives at the appropriate location, the software instructs the conveyor to lose power and the box rolls down to the target location.

These machines can reduce the manpower required for the warehouse. However, their most attractive part is that they enable companies to move industry operations to the right place. Kim believes: "If you are in the first-tier cities, the same day delivery has become the standard. This means that e-commerce should set up warehouses in densely populated urban areas. These places are expensive and can only use space vertically."