Boston Dynamics' New Robot Doesn't Dance. It Has a Warehouse Job (wired.com) 51
It can't do back flips like Atlas the humanoid robot, nor can it dance or open doors for its friends, like Spot the robotic dog can. Instead, Boston Dynamics' new robot, named Stretch, is going straight to work in a warehouse. Wired: Rolling around on a wheeled base, it's basically a large robotic arm that grabs boxes using vacuum power, and it's designed for tasks like unloading trucks or stacking pallets. If Spot and Atlas are the show-offs in the family, Stretch is the straight-up workhorse. But while these machines all look and move in wildly different ways, they actually share a lot of DNA. Stretch may seem familiar to you, because it's a sort of descendant of another machine that debuted a few years back: Handle. That robot had a similar suction arm, but it balanced on two wheels, like a Segway scooter. Handle would grab a box, scoot backward, turn 90 degrees, and roll away to stack the box somewhere else. It looked neat on video, but in practice the robot needed a lot of room to operate. It could manage unloading boxes from a truck, sure. "But it took a long time," says Kevin Blankespoor, lead of warehouse robotics at Boston Dynamics. "The truck is a pretty confined space. And so for Handle, every time it grabbed the box, it would need to roll back into some space where it could rotate freely without collisions."
Which is all to say: If Handle were a human, it'd be let go. So Boston Dynamics pivoted (sorry) to a new form factor for Stretch that slapped a similar robotic vacuum arm on a base with four wheels. Each wheel can move independently, so the robot can shift side to side or forward and backward to orient itself in, say, the back of a truck. This new base granted Stretch two powers. For one thing, resting on four wheels is a whole lot more energy efficient than trying to constantly balance on two. The same is true for animals: A dog or cat is inherently more stable than a human. (Stretch will get 8 hours of battery life, and clients will have the option to upgrade to a double battery that holds 16 hours of charge.) The second advantage is that Stretch's arm can now pivot around its base, while Handle had to pivot its whole body to turn. Stretch can shift up to 800 boxes an hour.
Which is all to say: If Handle were a human, it'd be let go. So Boston Dynamics pivoted (sorry) to a new form factor for Stretch that slapped a similar robotic vacuum arm on a base with four wheels. Each wheel can move independently, so the robot can shift side to side or forward and backward to orient itself in, say, the back of a truck. This new base granted Stretch two powers. For one thing, resting on four wheels is a whole lot more energy efficient than trying to constantly balance on two. The same is true for animals: A dog or cat is inherently more stable than a human. (Stretch will get 8 hours of battery life, and clients will have the option to upgrade to a double battery that holds 16 hours of charge.) The second advantage is that Stretch's arm can now pivot around its base, while Handle had to pivot its whole body to turn. Stretch can shift up to 800 boxes an hour.
But can it pee in bottles? (Score:5, Funny)
... asking for a friend
it can vote no to the union so we will take 10K of (Score:4, Interesting)
it can vote no to the union so we will take 10K of them.
Re:it can vote no to the union so we will take 10K (Score:5, Funny)
it can also vote in most Democrat states.
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LOL - never mind. What about requiring employers to pay a robot defined minimum wage for defined types of autonomous models with the money going towards a UBI?
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no we class it as an dog with an low to zero min wage
Re:The robot retails for $74,500 vs 8 bucks / h (Score:1)
Re: The robot retails for $74,500 vs 8 bucks / h (Score:1)
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it can also vote in most Democrat states.
It's the robot spring! Stop anti-robot discrimination!
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Whereas in Republican state it can't vote, but is counted as 2/3rds of a person for census purposes.
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that depends on the paint job.
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it can vote no to the union so we will take 10K of them.
You make a joke out of it, but this is actually the future.
Unskilled minimum-wage labor will become cheaper to automate rather than to deal with ringbearded union leaders who think an unskilled laborer should earn the same as an engineer with two graduate degrees. That does not mean that the low-wage worker should be exploited, which is imho the only reason why unions still have relevance.
Look at what Mickey D did. In a lot of jurisdictions where minimum wage was increased, they installed touch screen
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Right... Stay in school and run up massive debt. Look up what Mike Rowe has to say about that.
Then think about things that require skills but not necessarily schools/degrees.
Oddly, there seem to be quite a lot of them but... "They're soul sucking hard work"
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It can, but it hasn't quite mastered defecating into a plastic bag yet.
Industry versus Robots (Score:2)
Manufacturers do follow a standard for packaging. Is there even a robot-handling-friendly package standard? Right now a lot of packages are not in a standard box with a machine readable label. Thatâ(TM)s because product packaging is designed for putting on a store shelf and looking fancy to a consumer. Think of how much stuff comes in clear hard plastic in various shapes. And do books ever come in individual boxes? Packaging is of most products is flimsy odd sharpened and not designed for robotic picki
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Except in a warehouse those unfriendly packages are going to be grouped into bigger boxes which Stretch will then handle. Humans are good at breaking down boxes for fulfilling orders.
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Probably would work for some companies that have more standardized packaging. It doesn't have to be a robot that works for all purposes
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My point is that anyone who makes a robot should push their customers to push their vendors to adhere to a robot-handling-friendly packaging standard. I think big companies like Walmart have enough clout to force their vendors to do that.
Re: Industry versus Robots (Score:2)
Exactly I know several companies that produce items in standardize packaging. So they only have to buy so many different box sizes.
Yes a random pallet of stuff may be done by hand, but when you order 350 boxes of the same size this would be awesome. Infact I wish I had it and it's conveyor to unload a few of those trailers. 5 people two hours great cardio. With this robot 3 people could do it in an hour.
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Oddly-shaped packages are rarely used for moving cargo. They don't stack well, they don't pack densely, and they're a nightmare to handle. Your widgets and whatzits may come in odd consumer-appealing packages, but they pretty much always get shipped in rectangular boxes. The annoying packages only ever see the light of day at the factory and the store (be it brick-and-mortar or mail-order distribution center)
In the video it looks to be handling a lot of different box sizes and shapes, even from the same
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The thing is, they (retailers especially) need to push the vendors to make packaging that can be handled by robots. A lot of the computer standards came about because computer vendors pushed manufacturers to standardize (things like USB, HDMI, WiFi .. all the connectors and components inside a PC etc.)
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I don't get how these change much? (Score:2)
It seems to me these only work for very specific use cases with very specific box sizes and weights.
Example: If the box weighs too much, those suckers are just going to rip the top/side off the box.
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If you think that workers do not break boxes or do damage you will be disappointed.
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If you think that workers do not break boxes or do damage you will be disappointed.
Uhm, yeah. I do realize that. I guess you can't see the difference between a fuck up and a design limitation. You can't pick up a 100lb box of shake weights with a sucker on the top. The lid will rip off.
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You can't pick up a 100 pound cardboard box of shake weights, period. The bottom of a standard cardboard box won't handle the weight, and the sides are not rigid enough to not deform.
Stuff has to be packed appropriately, whether a human or robot will be handling them. Companies wishing to have their product sold in the largest markets will adapt their packaging to the needs of their customers. It's one of the few thing that capitalism does well.
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This is just the start. The robots will get cheaper and better at these jobs and then there will be no more of these jobs left.
Then the amazon workers will learn to code and enter a new era of blissful employment.
Or magical new jobs will appear, even though nobody can tell you why it is not possible for a robot to reach the same utility level as a low wage worker and hence outcompete them for every job they could potentially do.
But free markets, efficient profit maximisation hypothesis, etc etc, blah blah,
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No, the human cannot compete. Just look at an automobile assembly line, humans do not screw on lug nuts or paint quarter panels because it is just plain not possible for them to do it as well much less as rapidly or as cheaply. Your glorious free market will make no difference for the simple reason that it is not physically possible for a human to paint 200 quarter panels per hour perfectly no matter how many safety regulations they break.
I've done this robot's job, I would be better at it and faster at i
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In a free market a human loader would be able to compete against a robot loader, under the system that we have the robots (once they exist) will win almost every time.
I've thought about this too, as Milton Friedman talked about it in his argument against the minimum wage. There is a truth to that argument, but in the case of automation it does not work out because it has to assume there is no lower cost bound on making and supporting human labourers. The reality is there is massive cost in resources and energy to making and keeping a human box picker alive, and it will be relatively easy for a robot to be more economical than this. Theoretically in Friedman's efficient m
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UBI is soon going to be a necessity. Once upon a time a farm laborer could go screw on lug nuts when they were replaced by the tractor, but that's no longer the case. There are an awful lot of people out there who are just plain not bright enough to do anything more than walk a security patrol, delivery packages, or load pallets. When those jobs are gone their only future is UBI or go live under a bridge.
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Taxes. Just put a tax on the robot output and have that fund Universal Basic Income. It's effectively, when a robot replaces a human, that human gets the robots "salary." Or a part of it at least. The robot after all will be getting "paid" more because it is way more productive.
So yeah the future of humans is universal basic income, and (if you're wise) owning shares and investing in factories and companies. It's sort of like how retirement/social security already works. Social Security after all is paid f
He can dance if he wants to (Score:2)
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Cause your robots don't dance
And if they don't dance
Well, they're no bots of mine
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Cause your robots don't dance And if they don't dance Well, they're no bots of mine
Everything's under control!
Oh Look! (Score:2)
It's Metalhead! [wikipedia.org]
Don't fool yourself for a femtosecond. That's EXACTLY where this is going. With the way the legal system is structured to limit liability lawsuits, it's cheaper to kill people that to keep them out.
Labor...saving. (Score:3)
Stretch can shift up to 800 boxes an hour.
Better than a human.
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I used to unload a truck with a co-worker at the rate of about 1800 boxes an hour (we kicked ass, and pissed off the crew that had to proces those boxes, so that we could get out of that freezing trailer). You statement isn't true today, but within a couple more generations it will be.
why not both? (Score:5, Funny)
Has the important lesson of Flashdance and Saturday Night Fever been forgotten by the so-called writer of this headline? You can have a menial job by day, *and* be a fabulous dancer by night!
Okaay... (Score:2)
Stretch can shift up to 800 boxes an hour.
That's nice. Who loads boxes onto a truck that aren't palletized? (Assuming a truck big enough for a robot to roll into.) A practiced forklift driver can shift 800 boxes off a truck in 15 minutes when unloading at a dock (60 boxes per pallet average, 14 pallets), and even a driver with a manual pallet jack can usually do it in under 40 minutes. Stacking and shrinkwrapping the boxes onto the pallet is already roboticized at high volume shippers. Unpacking is not however.
Apparently UPS and FedEx handle r
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A practiced forklift driver can shift 800 boxes off a truck in 15 minutes when unloading at a dock (60 boxes per pallet average, 14 pallets), and even a driver with a manual pallet jack can usually do it in under 40 minutes.
Irrelevant. What is completely relevant is that Stretch doesn't require a salary, or benefits, or PTO, or diversity and inclusion training, or bathroom breaks and a breakroom, or anything else that a human worker is afforded. Stretch doesn't complain, or take sick days, or go on va
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Is that a problem? The future of humans is universal basic income, and (if you're wise) owning shares and investing in factories and companies. It's sort of like how retirement/social security already works. Social Security after all is paid for by the salaries of workers. In this case, the workers are robots. Just tax the factory such that a human can get a portion of the robot's salary (which ought to be huge given that the robot is way more productive). Effectively putting a human's name on each robot so
More Just-In-Time, just what we need. Ummm... (Score:2)
It's interesting that after the collapse of the Just In Time warehousing under Covid, and the bollox-up of Suez Crisis 2 that is yet to hit, Boston Dynamics decides to launch a robot to help cut Just In Time margins even thinner.
That strategy only works in a stable world, and I don't think we've got one anymore.
Suction arms? (Score:2)
Maybe, but you haven't met mine (Score:2)
from the TFA: " A dog or cat is inherently more stable than a human."
Shipping boxes are not designed for this. (Score:1)
Robots aren't great (Score:1)