Amazon's Vulcan Robots Now Stow Items Faster Than Humans

The challenge is not only stowing objects. It is also optimizing space and keeping it clean. In that matter robots are faster and better.

Optimizing space and trying to keep things neat is a futile effort. Pickers and counters are constantly pulling things out of the bins and putting them back in, and during high demand it's a chaotic mess. If there are going to be robots being this meticulous at every step of the process, then it's too slow.

There's a reason human beings are worked to the point of exhaustion in these warehouses - the goal is to move as much product as fast as possible. Quality and productivity are at cross purposes, and between the two only the latter makes money.

That is why, in the end, only robots will remain. They are inexhaustible and strictly meticulous in all circumstances.

Robots aren't inexhaustible. They break down a lot and are far more expensive to repair and maintain than a human being.

They're going to get better a lot faster than humans, though. The fact that they exist at all is remarkable.

I agree robots breakdown a lot, however if you think robots are more expensive to maintain you may want to take a look at the cost of American medical costs.

Real life interaction is anything but strictly meticulous. Inside an application (in silicon without bugs, not being hit by stray cosmic rays, not having software logic bug) things may seem ideal, but the moment you try to move a pole on a motor 5 cm forward, and 5cm backward, every day at the same time, you'll notice that ideal will have dismantled itself off the mount within two weeks

Mechanical engineering has a lot of practice on looking at failures and changing designs to make those less common or a maintenance item easy/cheap to fix. (they might have other options too, I'm not a ME)

>and are far more expensive to repair and maintain than a human being

Fillpy the robot will not:

  - need vacations
  - go on maternity leave
  - call in sick
  - steal from work
  - be rude to customers
  - go to work hungover from drinking
  - come in high/stoned at work
  - sue you for X,Y,Z
  - sexually harass colleagues
  - go on strike
  - start a union

All those pale in comparison to repair costs. That's why companies are pushing for automation. Because Flippy does its job quietly and diligently 24/7 without complaining.

"Meticulous" in industrial automation does not mean "Precise without the use of feedback-driven control loops".

Didn't they say this about LLMs but we still only have highly advanced slop generators, highly advanced autocomplete, and highly advanced search?

While they're impressively good in each of the aforementioned three fields, they're still not the world-changing technology they were supposed to be, right? (At least, not by themselves. When a very powerful human ties themselves to a slop machine, believing the output to be real, this can change the world)

The main achievement, besides search which is a very useful application, has been in how effectively we can get real people to believe total bullshit.