I have visited factories for work and my experience is the same. There is so much stuff that could easily be automated but is not because it is too expansive for too little value to make a custom one off machine. The big high volume things will be automated but these machines will have 90% success rate and lot's of stuff that needs to be done by hand. You can search for factory tours on youtube to get an idea. Here are two videos, an Amazon warehouse and a Tesla factory. the big heavy stuff is automated but lot's of work is still done by hand. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/-R6cBkza17k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45slYC99uUg

> How long ago was your robotics experience?

This is over the last decade at one of the largest automakers in the world. Naturally there is significant variation between individual lines and plants; some are newer and more automated, some are older and much less automated. Are some cars being built on more automated lines? Yes. But a great many, probably the vast majority, are being built with fairly low assembly* automation.

* There is a significant split in automation between "body weld" stages and "assembly" stages. Body weld is very heavily automated basically everywhere (although there are some surprising exceptions in places), while assembly is much less automated.

I remember around 2018 Tesla was actually criticised for excessive automation because it purportedly was slower and more expensive than manual work.

automotive workers unions started around 1918 and became major political players in the 30s -- a fact that i'm sure is wholly unrelated to why there are so many un-automated tasks in that industry.

Also, a general purpose robot vs a custom purpose robot represent very different capital investment profile for the factories?