Robot-Run Warehouse Speeds Deliveries

Ponca City, We Love You writes "The robot invasion may soon be coming to a warehouse near you. In a conventional warehouse, workers walk from shelf to shelf to fill orders, while in conveyor-based systems, boxes move past workers who pack them. A new warehouse design arranges rows and columns of freestanding shelves in a memory-chip-like grid serviced by robots. When a consumer submits an order, robots deliver the relevant shelving units to workers who pack the requested items in a box and ship them off allowing workers to fill orders two to three times faster than they could with conventional methods because the robots can work in parallel, allowing dozens of workers to fill dozens of orders simultaneously. The robotic system is also faster because the entire warehouse can adapt, in real time, to changes in demand by having the robots move shelves with popular items closer to the workers (pdf), where the shelves can be quickly retrieved while items that aren't selling are gradually moved farther away. Two giant warehouses have already been built for Staples and a third is being built for Walgreens where the software will also keep track of expiration dates to ensure that items that can go bad are sent out in the order that they're stocked."

Comments

Very promising.

[mikael_j]

I've been waiting for quite some time for industrial use of robots to go beyond stationary machines that weld or cut parts, obviously there are other things that robots are used for today but something like this might actually appeal to a lot of companies that are what you might call "conservative" when it comes to automation.

Because let's be honest, wouldn't we love to live in a world where all almost all menial labour is performed by automated machines with only a handful of skilled experts controlling the machines? I wouldn't really mind being one of the experts while freeing up a large portion of the population to do whatever they want. If we ever get to the point where less than 20% or so of the population is required to work in order to support the rest of the population then people really wouldn't have to work anymore because let's be honest, not everyone works just because they want money, there are lots of people who would continue working because they were passionate about their jobs. What we need to do is get rid of the boring mundane jobs that no one wants.

One problem with this "utopia" (Although Utopia as described in the book wasn't what most people think of when they hear the word) is support functions such as technical support and customer services, people are still going to have problems getting their DSL working and someone will have to help them with that. Oh well, it's a nice dream anyway, a technocratic utopia in which no one is forced to work a boring mundane job unless they want to..

/Mikael (dreamer)

Re:Very promising.

[CRCulver]

I wouldn't really mind being one of the experts while freeing up a large portion of the population to do whatever they want.

Technology hasn't increased leisure time. Rather it has only lengthened working hours except where the law has gotten involved (thank goodness for 35-hour working weeks in the EU as opposed to Victorian-era coal mines). Modern technological societies work much longer hours than hunter and gatherer cultures, though of course sitting in a cubicle is much less exhausting than chasing after a boar.

There is the old adage that work expands to fill the hours set for it. Now that the Western world is used to working all day every day, even after the rise of robot labour we might not necessarily get the utopia some people envision.

John Zerzan is probably the most well-known writer on the theme that technology only shackles humanity, see e.g. his Against Civilization . I don't agree with quite a lot of what he writes, but it is nonetheless thought-provoking.

Re:Very promising.

[mikael_j]

That's true. However, one interesting detail here is that in the past there have been examples of factories planning to automate parts of the production of various products which has resulted in massive protests from workers and local authorities afraid of mass unemployment. The end result of this of course being that the people in charge have been convinced in various ways (tax subsidies etc..) to hold back on automation.

This is probably the biggest problem with moving society to a state of "techno-utopia", that the transition could land a lot of people unemployed and unable to support themselves until the transition is over. I don't have a solution to this problem and until someone comes up with one I suspect we won't be hearing about people buying and selling things using energy credits instead of dollars and euros. :/

/Mikael

Just because we can, that's why.

[CBob]

Now it's the "service" jobs? Something really wonderful when the marginal pay jobs are being replaced with robotics.

Machines can't ask for benefits, sue for safer conditions, unionize or any of that nasty stuff.

Now all they need to do is actually buy all the wonderful outsourced or made in China items they're shipping.

Of course they'll also have to realize at some point that maybe replacing 5 guys that made 20k$ a year with a 2 million dollar system wasn't such a cunning plan, but by then, it'll be time to write off the system for the stockholders so the board can get a bigger bonus. /morning grouch mode <ON>

Re:Will noly slow things down.

[Anonymous Coward]

I can only imagine if someone hacks into system and does DROP DATABASE ITEM_LOCATIONS; or it gets borked for some other reason.

No one would know where the items are located currently and backups containing those locations might be hours old. This system really needs some serious redundancy.