Berkeley's Two-Armed Robot Hints at a New Future For Warehouses (axios.com) 70
Pick up a glass of water, lift a fork: you automatically figure out the best way to grasp each object. Now researchers at UC Berkeley have developed a robot that makes similar calculation, choosing on the fly whether to grab an object with pincers or lift it with a suction cup. From a report: Berkeley's two-armed robot, seen in this video clip [GIF file], first considers the contents of a bin and calculates each arm's probability of picking up an object. Its suction cup is good at grabbing smooth, flat objects like boxes, but bad at porous surfaces like on a stuffed animal. The pincers, on the other hand, are best with small, odd-shaped items. The system learned its pick-up prowess not from actual practice, but from millions of simulated grasps on more than 1,600 3D objects. In every simulation, small details were randomized, which taught the robot to deal with real-world uncertainty. The bot can pick up objects 95% of the time, at about 300 successful pickups per hour, its creators write in a paper published this week in Science Robotics. Warehouse robots that can move around merchandise are highly sought after. Amazon is reportedly working on its own "picker" robots, as are several robotics companies.
Goodbye Warehouse Picker (Score:2, Insightful)
Not right away of course, but in time. Automation will claim another job.
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Re:Goodbye Warehouse Picker (Score:4, Informative)
If that's the case, why so many still shout out that "we NEED" all these illegal 'guests' in the US from our southern border?
I thought they were so desperately needed by the US food economy to pick/harvest.
If that is no longer the case, why again are people defending letting them in illegally?
Re:Goodbye Warehouse Picker (Score:5, Informative)
If that's the case, why so many still shout out that "we NEED" all these illegal 'guests' in the US from our southern border?
I thought they were so desperately needed by the US food economy to pick/harvest.
If that is no longer the case, why again are people defending letting them in illegally?
Because they vote Democrat.
You have indeed identified the hole in their logic - it's all robots, all the time, until somebody wants to shut that southern door. Then suddenly it's human labor again.
They simultaneously don't matter, and also matter so much that we just can't close the door. Because reasons ...
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Do you have evidence that this argument has any significant voice behind it? I see right-wing rags pushing it as an argument that Dems frequently champion, but that's about it.
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Since the Census is used to decide apportionment (how many Representatives a state
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That's just it. You are being played by both sides. Illegal immigration is a wonderful football issue they can kick back and force. Both sides can use it to whip up their base. That's why nothing real is ever done about it.
Big companies love the slave labor and Democrats love the optics if gives their candidates with the people that can vote that sympathize with those that are here unlawfully.
Jail CEOs for hiring illegals. Mandatory e-verify. Sure, you will still have individuals going for fraudulent papers
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I agree with your sentiment, however, in this case, these two things are not mutually exclusive. "Farming" is not one thing. "Farming" consists of many processes bringing hundreds of type of products to market, and each of these product have multiple steps in getting it to market.
It is not unreasonable to automate picking of many crops and continuing to add more to this while still requiring manual labor for other more delicate crops.
By the way, plenty of Republican business owners also want the borde
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Nursery Planting.
Crop Seeding.
Crop Monitoring and Analysis.
Fertilizing and Irrigation.
Crop Weeding and Spraying.
Thinning and Pruning.
Autonomous Tractors.
Picking and Harvesting.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1&ei=gRZCXPmxL4jt5gK4mKi4Ag&q=examples+of+autimation+in+farming&oq=examples+of+autimation+in+farmi
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The number of workers needed per ton of produce uh... produced... has plummeted. But the amount produced has gone up, so we still need human labor. They are still necessary for certain high-value crops, like strawberries.
However, this is about to change, and robots will actually be capable of doing a better job of picking strawberries than humans because they don't have to bend over, and you can build in a brix meter. In fact, you could cover the plants with a plastic film or net that would protect them fro
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I don't think creating a job that requires back breaking work in bone chilling cold or soul oppressing heat could be called giving a shit about humans.
Almost every aspect of farming is back breaking work and the more that is automated, the better for everyone.
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"I don't think creating a job that requires back breaking work in bone chilling cold or soul oppressing heat could be called giving a shit about humans."
Didn't I just get done saying that they don't care?
(In regards to the sibling comment, saying that corporations don't care is a perfectly acceptable figure of speech in the English language.)
"Almost every aspect of farming is back breaking work and the more that is automated, the better for everyone."
You're assuming a rational world with primarily benevolen
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The corporations don't give a shit about humans, or the environment, or anything else but the bottom line.
Corporations don't care about the bottom lines, either. They can't, because corps are a legal fiction, not people. The reason this is important is because if you're going to attack something, you have to make sure you take good aim.
I would agree that corporate LEADERS don't give a shit about humans (at least not those in their immediate vicinity), or the environment, or anything else but the bottom line. But, then again, that doesn't make corporate leaders unique, does it?
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If that's the case, why so many still shout out that "we NEED" all these illegal 'guests' in the US from our southern border?
Economics is not zero sum. Farm automation eliminated 80% of jobs. Manufacturing automation eliminated another 40%. So we should have an employment rate of -20%. Instead we have a full employment economy with unemployment at 40 year lows.
As automation increases, productivity improves, human labor is more highly leveraged and more valuable, and living standards rise. American living standards have improved ten-fold since we started to automate in the 1800s. China has done the same in 30 years.
If that is no longer the case, why again are people defending letting them in illegally?
Unless th
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In addition, Americans aren't doing the nasty like they used to. Now, we are below replacement rate. So if Americans want to retire with some social security, medicare, and a host of other services, they'd better learn to welcome some non-native born new Americans.
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Well shit, you have to get a Consent Contract signed and notarized before you can even hug a woman these days...EVERY TIME.
No wonder PornHub is so popular,
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Very few people are saying America shouldn't have immigration. Very many people are saying America shouldn't have illegal immigration. Lying assholes pretend to be confused about that.
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Very few people are saying America shouldn't have immigration.
Plenty of people are saying that. One of them is our president, who has said that legal immigration should be curtailed.
Very many people are saying America shouldn't have illegal immigration.
Many of us are saying that most people coming here illegally should be able to come legally.
It is hypocritical to push these people into the shadows when our economy depends on them. The meatpacking industry is largely staffed with illegals. During the summer fires in California, firefighting teams were organized as either "English" or "Spanish" so there would be no intra-team communica
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All you have are excuses for breaking the laws.
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All you have are excuses for breaking the laws.
No, I am saying the laws should be changed.
Our way of life requires millions of people to break the law in order to pick our strawberries, butcher our hogs, and extinguish our fires. We have an immoral system, and we need to fix it.
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Why not require legal workers and proper compensation? Why should big farm get to screw over illegal workers for their profit margins? If you required citizens with workers rights you would indeed find American citizens willing to do these seasonal jobs.
Would food cost more? It just might but then again we would have a larger tax base with those extra jobs so we could afford more services or food subsidies if you wanted to go that route.
No one should be here undocumented and without basic medical screening.
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Here in Canada, we (actually the farmers) fly them up from Central America, house them, pay them $15+ an hour, and fly them back at the end of the season. Everyone is happy and food isn't that much more expensive.
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Do you understand the difference between "less immigration" and "no immigration"? Assuming you believe in democracy, I'd assume you'd agree that the voting citizenry has the right to determine the rate, whatever it might be? A goal that is impossible before we secure the border.
During the summer fires in California, firefighting teams were organized as either "English" or "Spanish" so there would be no intra-team communication problems. 80% of the teams choose Spanish. So you want to deport the family of the guy who just saved your house?
I moved to a state less mindbogglingly fucking stupid in every way and every decision than California, and so my state is not on fire! But that's neither here nor there.
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No, he said we should be able to be SELECTIVE about who gets to immigrate in.
I agree with that.
Let's let people that are higher on the education and productivity totem pole in ahead of the others.
We have plenty of lower class and folks that drag on the welfare system.
We should want and welcome those more educated and productive into our country.....I don't know anyone that has a prob
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Unless there is a good reason otherwise, people should be free to move and live where they want.
Agreed. In this case, the good reason is the American/European social safety net. Once you put that in place, someone moving from a poor country to try their hand at the American Dream is not a zero cost to me. They must stop swinging, because my nose is occupying the space.
And immigrants do "steal jobs". I worked with a part time tobacco farmer. He bragged about hiring Latinos, because they would work for practically nothing and were happy to live in a dilapidated shed he had on the property. He coul
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Agreed. In this case, the good reason is the American/European social safety net. Once you put that in place, someone moving from a poor country to try their hand at the American Dream is not a zero cost to me. They must stop swinging, because my nose is occupying the space.
Logically, this applies just as much to Americans as it does to immigrants. Benefits for a poor American are not zero cost to you either.
And immigrants do "steal jobs".
The problem with your anecdote is that you are ignoring the jobs generated when those workers spend their earnings. You are also ignoring the alternative jobs that the citizens find, thus allowing other areas of the economy to expand that otherwise would be restricted by lack of labor. More than 60% of America businesses say they are unable to find all the workers they
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You did report him didn't you? People like your tobacco farmer are the ones responsible for the illegals coming to get jobs.
And does America actually give benefits to illegals? Or is like here where Americans show up with fake papers and sponge of our medical system without paying into it.
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More recently (last 40 years) productivity has increased
It has increased by less than you may think. In the 1st World, productivity has stagnated. The easy gains came from automating agriculture and manufacturing decades ago. Today we are mostly a service economy, and services are harder to automate.
Stagnant productivity gains are slowing economic growth [usnews.com]
There is a myth that automation is happening "faster and faster". It isn't, and that is a problem.
hourly compensation for the workers at the bottom hasn't really budged.
Capitalism excels at creating wealth. It isn't so good a "fairly" distributing that wealth.
We should focus on
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So..you are an open borders motherfucker.
I see.
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That kind of system only works when you have a small set of items your are sorting, and the items have some sort of size difference.
TFA does not say this, and I see no reason to believe it is true. Why does the set have to be small? Why is a size difference needed?
the items can be a different as a teddy bear and a fishing pole
That is the point. This robot has different grippers for different products.
or as similar as two models of phone that differ only by the UPC on their boxes.
Then obviously the same gripper can be used twice. Duh.
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hey! (Score:2)
The pincers, on the other hand, are best with small, odd-shaped items.
You insensitive clod! Why I oughta ...
Oh, never mind.
I kept thinking of 1 armed bandits now becoming 2 (Score:1)
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Overstated (Score:3)
Pick up a glass of water, lift a fork: you automatically figure out the best way to grasp each object.
No you don't. You spend weeks learning, as a child. These researchers have completely forgotten that humans don't know these things. They learn them, with lots of spills along the way. Then they relearn them as their musculature changes as they grow older. The robot gets to skip that second part, but the human doesn't get the skip the first part any more than the robot does. They both have to perform the "more than 1600 pickups" before they can make a reasonable prediction of the best way to grasp something, and then succeed in the attempt on the first try. I don't know if anyone has counted how many pickup attempts a baby makes before it gets good at picking things up, but I'm betting it's at least 1600 attempts, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if it's many more.
There's been years and years of development in picker robots, and they're still pretty bad. Let's face it, a 95% success rate is pretty terrible. The researchers shouldn't feel bad about their continued failures though. Picking things up is hard for humans too. Hell, for some humans it's permanently hard. Even with adult-sized hands, a developmentally disabled human may never get good at picking things up.
Bad headline (Score:2)
The headline held so much promise but it turns out there are no armed robots. Hoping for a real life Robotron.
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They are also working robot protesters.
Complete with black masks, stupid signs and recorded shouts of "Nazi!"
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You have no future in tentacle porn.
Video? GIF? (Score:2)
GIF was NEVER meant to be used for videos and whoever made this should never be allowed near a web server or code editor ever again for the rest of his life.
What's next? A spreadsheet with background coloured 1x1 pixel cells instead of using JPEG to display a photo?
A high-resolution PNG of a waveform instead of using MP3?
ARMED!?!?! (Score:2)
Am I the only person that saw the headline and thought you can't give robots guns that's an accidental shooting waiting to happen. Then read the summary and was a little disappointed.
Real robots have three arms (Score:3)
And they know how to use them in warehouses.
Only slacker bots use two arms.
Test it on the sidewalks of Berkeley (Score:2)
How about using this picking up the litter around the city of Berkeley first, then head off to the warehouses.
What's it do if I kick it? (Score:2)