Nissan's factory robots got stuck in their own traffic jam

Nissan's newest factory workers move on wheels, not legs, and they've already caused at least one pileup. While rolling out autonomous mobile robots at its Smyrna, Tennessee plant, the automaker's software briefly dispatched two robots to the same spot at the same time.

"Of course you wish everything works perfectly out of the box," said JS Bolton, Nissan's senior director of manufacturing at the plant. "But it doesn't."

These robots, made by Rockwell Automation's OTTO division, are guided by lidar and camera technology in the body shop, where employees weld metal parts into vehicle frames.

The biggest robot can move 4,190 pounds at 4.5 miles per hour, sliding underneath part racks, raising them several inches, and moving them to production cells without the need for the magnetic tape that automated systems from an earlier generation used.

Components are moved from the truck docks to a staging area by forklift drivers and then taken care of by the robots.

Slate, who is the body and stamping director at the plant, has claimed that the robots themselves were fine, but what proved to be difficult was making their software interface with the software used in Nissan's material flow and equipment control.

The integration experts from Powerhouse Controls have been working round the clock for seven days a week to ensure that the system remains on schedule. The forklift operators are on alert just in case anything goes wrong with the automated system.

Once complete, the robots will take over material-handling work currently done by 64 forklift and tug operators. Nissan says those employees will stay on the payroll but move into different roles, including some that involve operating industrial robots.

Slate said the news landed roughly four months before the transition and initially went over poorly. "Initially, all they heard was, 'Our job's not going to be here,'" he said, though some workers have since embraced the shift.