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Robot-Run Warehouse Speeds Deliveries
Posted by
Zonk
on Sat Nov 10, 2007 07:15 AM
from the we-are-so-obsolete dept.
from the we-are-so-obsolete dept.
Ponca City, We Love You writes "The robot invasion may soon be coming to a warehouse near you. In a conventional warehouse, workers walk from shelf to shelf to fill orders, while in conveyor-based systems, boxes move past workers who pack them. A new warehouse design arranges rows and columns of freestanding shelves in a memory-chip-like grid serviced by robots. When a consumer submits an order, robots deliver the relevant shelving units to workers who pack the requested items in a box and ship them off allowing workers to fill orders two to three times faster than they could with conventional methods because the robots can work in parallel, allowing dozens of workers to fill dozens of orders simultaneously. The robotic system is also faster because the entire warehouse can adapt, in real time, to changes in demand by having the robots move shelves with popular items closer to the workers (pdf), where the shelves can be quickly retrieved while items that aren't selling are gradually moved farther away. Two giant warehouses have already been built for Staples and a third is being built for Walgreens where the software will also keep track of expiration dates to ensure that items that can go bad are sent out in the order that they're stocked."
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Very promising. (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been waiting for quite some time for industrial use of robots to go beyond stationary machines that weld or cut parts, obviously there are other things that robots are used for today but something like this might actually appeal to a lot of companies that are what you might call "conservative" when it comes to automation.
Because let's be honest, wouldn't we love to live in a world where all almost all menial labour is performed by automated machines with only a handful of skilled experts controlling the machines? I wouldn't really mind being one of the experts while freeing up a large portion of the population to do whatever they want. If we ever get to the point where less than 20% or so of the population is required to work in order to support the rest of the population then people really wouldn't have to work anymore because let's be honest, not everyone works just because they want money, there are lots of people who would continue working because they were passionate about their jobs. What we need to do is get rid of the boring mundane jobs that no one wants.
One problem with this "utopia" (Although Utopia as described in the book wasn't what most people think of when they hear the word) is support functions such as technical support and customer services, people are still going to have problems getting their DSL working and someone will have to help them with that. Oh well, it's a nice dream anyway, a technocratic utopia in which no one is forced to work a boring mundane job unless they want to..
/Mikael (dreamer)
Re:Very promising. (Score:5, Insightful)
Technology hasn't increased leisure time. Rather it has only lengthened working hours except where the law has gotten involved (thank goodness for 35-hour working weeks in the EU as opposed to Victorian-era coal mines). Modern technological societies work much longer hours than hunter and gatherer cultures, though of course sitting in a cubicle is much less exhausting than chasing after a boar.
There is the old adage that work expands to fill the hours set for it. Now that the Western world is used to working all day every day, even after the rise of robot labour we might not necessarily get the utopia some people envision.
John Zerzan is probably the most well-known writer on the theme that technology only shackles humanity, see e.g. his Against Civilization [amazon.com] . I don't agree with quite a lot of what he writes, but it is nonetheless thought-provoking.
Parent
Re:Very promising. (Score:4, Insightful)
That's true. However, one interesting detail here is that in the past there have been examples of factories planning to automate parts of the production of various products which has resulted in massive protests from workers and local authorities afraid of mass unemployment. The end result of this of course being that the people in charge have been convinced in various ways (tax subsidies etc..) to hold back on automation.
This is probably the biggest problem with moving society to a state of "techno-utopia", that the transition could land a lot of people unemployed and unable to support themselves until the transition is over. I don't have a solution to this problem and until someone comes up with one I suspect we won't be hearing about people buying and selling things using energy credits instead of dollars and euros. :/
/Mikael
Parent
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Re:Very promising. (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
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This Is Because of Immigration Laws (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't really look at Mexicans as merely cheap labor, I'm just speaking in very frank terms of what anti-immigration laws and fence building are going to do to us.
If you are still productive from the result of a robot and the person who used to have that job can now go to school, I only see more skilled workers in the workforce. People aren't as stupid as you think they are, they just haven't had a chance to go to school. There may be a generation or two that adapt badly to this new model but I welcome the future where a farming family's children now have the option to go to school because the farm can be just as efficient and producing as it would be without the children.
Corporate farms are going to love this even though they'll hate the initial cost of the machines being greater than the poor Mexican wages.
Parent
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Well, the technocratic idea is to give everyone "energy credits" which represent a certain percentage of energy production, the cost of various items and services would then be directly proportional to how much energy is required to supply them.
There are of course problems with greed which is why a society like this won't be likely until we are able to produce goods on such a level that your ability to consume manufactured goods won't be hindered by how well-paid you are but rather by the fact that you are
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Insightful, but we reached that point decades ago.
See:
"The
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As others have noted, we're already there if you're just talking about food, clothing and shelter. But as our technology improves, our demand for convenience also increases; so I doubt we'll ever see a "Utopia" such as you describe. We will never "get rid of the boring mundane jobs that no one wants" because our definition of "mundane" is always changing.
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Obviously the idea is that you automate the boring jobs and make sure that everyone shares the wealth. You OTOH are still thinking in terms of dollars, profits and shareholders (at least that's how your post reads). I'm not saying there are no problems with the idea but I am saying you have to look beyond what we have right now to understand the appeal of it.
There would probably still be a need for people to help customers in stores, but imagine if they didn't have to stock shelves, clean up in the isles a
Just because we can, that's why. (Score:2, Insightful)
Machines can't ask for benefits, sue for safer conditions, unionize or any of that nasty stuff.
Now all they need to do is actually buy all the wonderful outsourced or made in China items they're shipping.
Of course they'll also have to realize at some point that maybe replacing 5 guys that made 20k$ a year with a 2 million dollar system wasn't such a cunning plan, but by then, it'll be time to
The warehouses are not the reason for waiting (Score:2)
1) the package delivery service does not have a pick-up point to where you can send your item - yes, currently living alone;
2) the item has to be ordered by the online shop.
This might speed up some things, but they don't remove the real problems. It might be interesting for other reasons than delivery time, or when near real time delivery is in order (e.g. Ikea like concept, without the hassle o
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I've seen something like this (Score:5, Interesting)
This was 4 years ago, so not sure how cutting edge the technology is...
Who will terminate the manual laborers? (Score:3, Interesting)
Because I feel I'm near the top of the cognitive scale*, robots don't bother me. They mean that I get things faster, more accurately, and probably cheaper. But there are a lot of people who are going to be idled by this type of technology. And the world population is still growing, so there will be even more at the lower end of the scale (in numbers - it's simple statistics), and fewer jobs for them. It's a bit odd, but there has recently been a big backlash over the eugenics movement that occurred in the mid 20th century in the US, mostly because it's politically incorrect to talk of such things. We are getting so efficient that we can more easily support those at the bottom. The question is...do we want to?
*Please don't give me shit about that comment - practically everyone on
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We raise people to be meat robots, and it's only a small percentage that refuse. We keep treating them as meat robots in their jobs. When they stop having to be a meat robot all the time... some will sink into indolence, but how
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Stupid. Written off. Underprivileged. Poorly motivated. Call them whatever you like. There is a large segment of the population who - fo
Another piece of the puzzle (Score:3, Informative)
Slowly these things get better. Automatically guided vehicles have been around for about 25 years, and they keep improving. Early ones were guided by wires buried in the floor, and essentially ran on tracks. Now they have much more flexibility.
About fifteen years ago there was a research project which used small forklift-like robots. These worked together to move loads too big for one to lift. Two such robots could pick up and move a couch. That idea needs to be revived.
Quietly, the machinery for moving containers around ports is becoming automated. Several ports now have large, autonomous machines moving containers around. [ieee.org] Antwerp has had this for years, but there the container sits on top of the AGV. The new approach is automated straddle cranes, the same cranes normally driven by humans. The article points out that the robots drive better than people; fuel and tire consumption are down 30%. The big container cranes themselves have had vision systems and LIDAR units for years; many are now fully automated.
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Defrag? Manual Override by the Hoomanz! (Score:3, Informative)
I worked on the docs for something similar - a robot fetch to conveyer packing - and there are periodic "defrags" where humans with barcode scanners check each bin and inventory the contents, then adjust inventory to match what is REALLY in the bins. Robots are powered down for this :)
The packers could also send a bin off to the Orwellian-sounding "readj