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Amazon's Vulcan Robots Now Stow Items Faster Than Humans

(spectrum.ieee.org)
209 points Luc | 2 comments | 09 May 25 11:18 UTC | HN request time: 0.452s | source
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omneity ◴[09 May 25 11:53 UTC] No.43935797[source]▶
Warehouses is definitely not where I expected robots with retractable blades to first appear.

The demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWXco05eK28

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krapp ◴[09 May 25 11:56 UTC] No.43935812[source]▶
That's still far slower than a human being, and those bins are far too neat.
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dlt713705 ◴[09 May 25 12:12 UTC] No.43935901[source]▶
The challenge is not only stowing objects. It is also optimizing space and keeping it clean. In that matter robots are faster and better.
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krapp ◴[09 May 25 12:22 UTC] No.43935960[source]▶
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.

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dlt713705 ◴[09 May 25 12:27 UTC] No.43935998[source]▶
That is why, in the end, only robots will remain. They are inexhaustible and strictly meticulous in all circumstances.
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1. maintainarmsx ◴[09 May 25 13:12 UTC] No.43936350[source]▶
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
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2. mapt ◴[09 May 25 13:45 UTC] No.43936673[source]▶
"Meticulous" in industrial automation does not mean "Precise without the use of feedback-driven control loops".