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Amazon's Vulcan Robots Now Stow Items Faster Than Humans

(spectrum.ieee.org)
209 points Luc | 1 comments | 09 May 25 11:18 UTC | HN request time: 0.2s | 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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raisedbyninjas ◴[09 May 25 13:15 UTC] No.43936383[source]▶
It appears this bot could be about 100 times simpler if they just had storage racks with smaller cubbies at the modest expense of usable storage volume. 1 item per cubbie.
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1. dehugger ◴[10 May 25 02:31 UTC] No.43942783[source]▶
Generally speaking space is the most valuable commodity in a warehouse (up to a certain height).

A robot that costs 5x as much but yields 30% more usable space is a better value proposition.

Also you wouldn't be able to accommodate anything besides items that fit in that specific pick bin (what a cubbie is called in the industry), meaning you would always need a near perfect match of # of bins of a specific size to the # of products matching them. It would be a continual battle to change racking as products move in and out of the warehouse.

A more complicated robot is a better robot, in this case.