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The shelves come to the human picker with the items for a particular order.

http://www.kivasystems.com/sol...

They describe is as "Kiva is the ultimate goods-to-man (goods-to-person) automation system."

Now they want to replace the word "man" or "person" with "robot".

The next step from there is to automate stocking of the shelves (I'm would bet the shelves come to the loading area when there are items available to resupply them).

This has nothing to do with sales taxes. That's a few percent. It's all about efficient warehouse and distribution operations. Doing that wrong can double operating costs.

WebVan was a popular service during the dot-com boom. They just had an operating cost problem. They had about 3% market share in 30 cities, instead of 30% market share in 3 cities. So their order processing and delivery costs were too high.

One of WebVan's former executives realized that order processing had to be much more automated for this concept to work. So he founded Kiva Robotics. Upwards of 15% of online orders are handled by Kiva robots. If you've ordered from a major online retailer, (Acumen Brands, Drugstore.com, Gap, Toys-R-Us, Walgreens...) a Kiva robot probably handled the order.

Last year, Amazon bought Kiva Robotics. The whole company. Then they started building warehouses near major US cities and talking about same-day delivery. Those warehouses will have a lot of Kiva robots and not too many humans.

While some grocery chains like Safeway do delivery, they're not very good at it. They're picking from store shelves. So they don't know, when the order is taken, if the item is in stock. Safeway tends to deliver with some items missing. Automated warehousing operations know what they have in stock when the system takes the order.

It's going to be like Webvan again. But this time, it will be profitable. The retailers who see this coming are very afraid.

This has been known for some time. The biggest energy cost associated with many food products is moving the 2-ton family SUV to and from the grocery store to move 25 pounds of merchandise. Moving a fully loaded semi isn't that expensive per unit weight.

Webvan is coming back. Amazon owns it now. Webvan was popular, but the operating costs were too high. One of Webvan's executives realized that what they needed was robots. He went on to found Kiva Systems, which makes robots for warehouse operations. Kiva robots handle fulfillment at Walgreens.com, Gap.com, Staples.com, and many other big retailers.

Amazon recently bought Kiva. Amazon's CEO is an investor in Rethink Robotics, which makes robot arms and hands. (The Kiva robots move shelf units to human pickers, where a laser pointer shows them what to pick. It looks like eliminating the human pickers is next.) Amazon is opening local warehouses in major cities. Amazon is starting to offer same-day delivery. This time it will be profitable.

Small retailers who are aware of this are very afraid.

We're seeing the return of the Iron Law of Wages: real wages always tend, in the long run, toward the minimum wage necessary to sustain the life of the worker. That had been the case for most of history. For most of the 20th century, the Iron Law of Wages was viewed by economists as being obsolete. That may have just been a historical anomaly in capitalism. The period during which wages substantially exceeded survival level in the US was the period in which labor unions had enough power to push wages up. That's over.

"Machines should think, people should work". Humans just do the dumb manipulation jobs that still cost more to do with robots. Kiva Robotics video: "Training for a human picker on the system takes a minute or so." The end result is that most new jobs pay about $10.25 per hour. It's now cheaper to put the smarts in the software rather than train skilled workers. Computers are so cheap, and copying software is even cheaper.

As retail goes online, whole sectors of the economy disappear, buildings go vacant, and jobs go away forever. One (1) new indoor mall has been built in the US in the last decade. (We don't count the New Jersey Meadowlands debacle; they're not open after a decade and the roof collapsed.) Many, many malls are dead. First, order processing and payment went online. Then warehouse operation and order fulfillment. Ordered from Staples, the Gap, Walgreens, Saks Fifth Avenue, Toys "R" Us, Follett, Timberland, Diapers.com, or Dillard's? Mobile robots did most of the work. Amazon just bought Kiva Robotics. Coming up next, Google same-day delivery service. (Not with automatic truck driving. Yet.)

We have an economic system which optimizes for lowest costs, including labor costs. It's working as designed. Do you want fries with that?

We're seeing the return of the Iron Law of Wages: real wages always tend, in the long run, toward the minimum wage necessary to sustain the life of the worker. That had been the case for most of history. For most of the 20th century, the Iron Law of Wages was viewed by economists as being obsolete. That may have just been a historical anomaly in capitalism. The period during which wages substantially exceeded survival level in the US was the period in which labor unions had enough power to push wages up. That's over.

"Machines should think, people should work". Humans just do the dumb manipulation jobs that still cost more to do with robots. Kiva Robotics video: "Training for a human picker on the system takes a minute or so." The end result is that most new jobs pay about $10.25 per hour. It's now cheaper to put the smarts in the software rather than train skilled workers. Computers are so cheap, and copying software is even cheaper.

As retail goes online, whole sectors of the economy disappear, buildings go vacant, and jobs go away forever. One (1) new indoor mall has been built in the US in the last decade. (We don't count the New Jersey Meadowlands debacle; they're not open after a decade and the roof collapsed.) Many, many malls are dead. First, order processing and payment went online. Then warehouse operation and order fulfillment. Ordered from Staples, the Gap, Walgreens, Saks Fifth Avenue, Toys "R" Us, Follett, Timberland, Diapers.com, or Dillard's? Mobile robots did most of the work. Amazon just bought Kiva Robotics. Coming up next, Google same-day delivery service. (Not with automatic truck driving. Yet.)

We have an economic system which optimizes for lowest costs, including labor costs. It's working as designed. Do you want fries with that?

Whatever happened to the concept that you'd just push your cart through an RFID portal, everything in your cart would be interrogated, and you'd get an immediate bill? Wal-Mart was behind that. NCR demonstrated it in 2004. That was a more promising idea.

Vision systems for checkout are available. There's LaneHawk, for recognizing big items at the bottom of the cart, and VeggieVision, for recognizing vegetables on a scale pan. Automated checkout is getting better.

The future of retail looks more like WebVan. WebVan was a flop, but not because of customer acceptance. WebVan was popular, but the operating costs were too high. "Soap.com" (acquired by Amazon) is now doing the WebVan thing of delivering routine items. But now, with Kiva robotic order picking, it's profitable. Kiva's system is now doing about 10% of online order picking in the US. Costs are about 1/5 of human picking.

Delivery uses less fuel than driving a ton of car to the store to move a few pounds of merchandise. At $4 per gallon and up, Soap.com's shipping rates (Max of $5, free for orders over $39) look really good.

The future of retail is online ordering and delivery. Been to a record store lately? A video rental store? A bank branch? A travel agency? Look at all the vacant retail space that will never again be occupied.

This is purely speculation, so take it with a grain of salt: No raw materials and manufacturing work from China due to embargoes and general asshattery --> Huge demand for mats and mfg --> No workforce willing/able/allowed to do the work --> the perpetually "almost there" robotics industry lurches forward to fill the void. The warehousing industry has already been transformed by robots, and theres plenty of talk about robotic mining already. I can't help but think that all this is quite a good thing.

The robocup winnings and the reassembling chair you mentioned are both work of Raffaello D'Andrea. His website is at http://www.mae.cornell.edu/raff/. Raff is now working at a company called Kiva Systems that does some really amazing robotics work for warehouses: http://kivasystems.com/.