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.

[absoluteflatness]

The real dream here is that 20% of the people would ever decide to support the other 80% out of the goodness of their hearts. These kinds of developments tend to be seen more as a harbinger of doom than pointing towards a future utopia. Eliminate all menial labor without drastically increasing the quality of education would result in massive unemployment and unrest, I fear. Yes, people would still be having trouble with their DSL, but as a result of the riots.

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

Re:Very promising.

[Paul Fernhout]

"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."

Insightful, but we reached that point decades ago.

See:
"The Abolition of Work" by Bob Black, 1985
http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
"I don't suggest that most work is salvageable in this way. But then most work isn't worth trying to save. Only a small and diminishing fraction of work serves any useful purpose independent of the defense and reproduction of the work-system and its political and legal appendages. Twenty years ago, Paul and Percival Goodman estimated that just five percent of the work then being done -- presumably the figure, if accurate, is lower now -- would satisfy our minimal needs for food, clothing and shelter. Theirs was only an educated guess but the main point is quite clear: directly or indirectly, most work serves the unproductive purposes of commerce or social control. Right off the bat we can liberate tens of millions of salesmen, soldiers, managers, cops, stockbrokers, clergymen, bankers, lawyers, teachers, landlords, security guards, ad-men and everyone who works for them. There is a snowball effect since every time you idle some bigshot you liberate his flunkies and underlings also. Thus the economy implodes."

And:
"The Triple Revolution: Cybernation, Weaponry, Human Rights" sent to President Lyndon B. Johnson in March 1964
http://www.educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/C_CC2a_TripleRevolution.htm

Of course, we actually had such a life as hunter/gatherers (ignoring some of the downsides there). Essentially, when there was a small human population relative to the size fo the planet., food was abundant relative to the number of people, so it was very easy to acquire.
http://www.primitivism.com/original-affluent.htm

And here is the great tragedy of the Americas:
http://www.marcinequenzer.com/creation.htm#The%20Field%20of%20Plenty
"The Field of Plenty is always full of abundance. The gratitude we show as Children of Earth allows the ideas within the Field of Plenty to manifest on the Good Red Road so we may enjoy these fruits in a physical manner. When the cornucopia was brought to the Pilgrims, the Iroquois People sought to assist these Boat People in destroying their fear of scarcity. The Native understanding is that there is always enough for everyone when abundance is shared and when gratitude is given back to the Original Source. The trick was to explain the concept of the Field of Plenty with few mutually understood words or signs. The misunderstanding that sprang from this lack of common language robbed those who came to Turtle Island of a beautiful teaching. Our "land of the free, home of the brave" has fallen into taking much more than is given back in gratitude by its citizens. Turtle Island has provided for the needs of millions who came from lands that were ruled by the greedy. In our present state of abundance, many of our inhabitants have forgotten that Thanksgiving is a daily way of living, not a holiday that comes once a year."

Thankfully via the GPL and some inspiration (RepRap), those abundant days may come again:
http://reprap.org/
"RepRap is short for Replicating Rapid-prototyper. It is the practical self-copying 3D printer

Re:Very promising.

[CRCulver]

No, read up on hunter gatherer lifestyles. The work week in the Congo before European colonization was three days long. Agriculture was what brought in working from dusk to dawn every day.

Re:Very promising.

[name*censored*]

> 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.

Yes, but there's no reason to think this won't yo-yo back on us. The reasons machines increase our workload are 1) Machines do not interface with humans very efficiently; UIs need to be learned, and appendages do not move as quickly or as accurately as the brain would like them to 2) The demand for everything has increased directly due to machines (as we are now living longer, reproducing more, spending more resources on and using more tools for leisure, and doing things that only technology makes possible) - but the ability to supply it automatically has not kept up. (As you've said, work expands to fill time out) 3) Machines aren't yet capable of doing "complex" tasks (tasks that require constant evaluation of the surrounding environment with unpredictable parameters), only doing simple tasks really, well and very quickly. (PS. Machines' ability to do things that seem complex to us, ie, lengthy sums, are only because that's their most basic function, ours is not) 4) The very existence/evolution of technology to the point of "utopia" means that we have to move at a very rapid pace (compared to the boar-hunter who would find a good tactic and stick to it for his life), we have to constantly re-learn UIs, install new system/infrastructure, fix the problems with the new systems, all whilst doing everything we used to do. 5) The amount of data being collected, cached and shared is at unprecedented levels. Almost every job in the western world involves dealing with large amounts of data in very short spaces of time, which exhausts people (which slows them down and makes them work longer). This would not happen if the data entry was handled entirely by machines. 6) Machines' interaction with the general environment is at a very early stage; there is no machine that is suitable to the variety of elements and environments that humans are exposed to as a matter of course. Even though there are machines that can handle situations humans can't (extreme heat, radioactivity, poisons, explosives, intense pressures, concussions, etc), these specialty machines are just that - only suited to the environment for which they were made.

However, technology is making vast strides into all these problems that it created, and given that we seem to be reaching the end of the possible problems that the machines can produce, and are starting to have look towards solving problems (e.g. the environmental problems caused by machines), there's no reason to think that the workload will continue to increase for much longer (what we'll do with ourselves once we're free of work is another matter entirely).

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>

I've seen something like this

[Biotech9]

I used to work for a major pharma company that had a big plant in Ireland. They had a massive totally automated warehouse, with one spider in it that could pick up any pallet and deliver it to almost anywhere in the plant in minutes. Inside the warehouse was strictly off limits, no space at all for human traffic. It had a few teething problems, but it did what 20ish people used to do in a fraction of the time.

This was 4 years ago, so not sure how cutting edge the technology is...

Re:why is this news

[macdo10]

Omeone tried to sell me this system for my warehouse just last week. I laughed politely. $2 000 000 + to replace one guy + another 5 or 6 temps, two months per year? I don't think so...

This Is Because of Immigration Laws

[eldavojohn]

Eliminate all menial labor without drastically increasing the quality of education would result in massive unemployment and unrest, I fear. Yes, people would still be having trouble with their DSL, but as a result of the riots. You know, I couldn't disagree with you more. You know why this technology is "suddenly" popping up even though we've really had it for a long time? How about the recent crack down on 'illegal aliens' in the states? This is going to spread everywhere because the cheap labor that was once here will slowly dry up. The people who traveled to farms to work in the summer, they can't do that anymore. You should expect to see these robots of various sizes and kinds show up on farms too to off set our loss of cheap labor.

I don't really look at Mexicans as merely cheap labor, I'm just speaking in very frank terms of what anti-immigration laws and fence building are going to do to us.

If you are still productive from the result of a robot and the person who used to have that job can now go to school, I only see more skilled workers in the workforce. People aren't as stupid as you think they are, they just haven't had a chance to go to school. There may be a generation or two that adapt badly to this new model but I welcome the future where a farming family's children now have the option to go to school because the farm can be just as efficient and producing as it would be without the children.

Corporate farms are going to love this even though they'll hate the initial cost of the machines being greater than the poor Mexican wages.

Who will terminate the manual laborers?

[Overzeetop]

This is what's lost on these discussions. We're eliminating jobs for those in the manual labor sector. What? Train them for something else? I suggest looking at my sig. There are a lot of people out there who are simply untrainable. The gap between the top 20% of the population and the bottom 20% of the population in the ability to excel at modern, efficient methods an techniques is just astounding. In an agrarian world, being dumb may hold you back a bit, but you can still make a living and be productive. We're eliminating that class. The result is that, with a compressed intellectual range of "valuable" occupations, the disparity in cognitive ability has widened relative to the scale by which we measure. That was terribly worded...um...if the job market in the early 20th century had lots of positions for people who's cognitive skill set ranged from a "3" to a "10" on a scale of 1-10, the job market today has the majority in the range of "5" to "10", and we're moving towards the "7" to "10" range. The further we go, the more people will not be competent to do the jobs available. Now that's okay, because with efficiencies and replacement of lower skilled jobs by machines means we need fewer people at that level. At the same time that's a problem because you just can't go and kill all those folks who are no longer needed. Ideally we could get rid of those in society as we replaced them with machines. Otherwise they become unemployable wards of the state, or turn to illegal means to support themselves.

Because I feel I'm near the top of the cognitive scale*, robots don't bother me. They mean that I get things faster, more accurately, and probably cheaper. But there are a lot of people who are going to be idled by this type of technology. And the world population is still growing, so there will be even more at the lower end of the scale (in numbers - it's simple statistics), and fewer jobs for them. It's a bit odd, but there has recently been a big backlash over the eugenics movement that occurred in the mid 20th century in the US, mostly because it's politically incorrect to talk of such things. We are getting so efficient that we can more easily support those at the bottom. The question is...do we want to?

*Please don't give me shit about that comment - practically everyone on /. is near the top.

Re:Who will terminate the manual laborers?

[bfsmith9]

Oh, wow. This isn't directed at you personally, but at what you said.

That's a great argument for eugenics, sure. Sounds like good Nazi-speak, really.

It's not that people are stupid, it's just that they're written off. I remember when we were shedding jobs right and left in the '90s, and there was all kinds of noise coming out of the Clinton administration about retraining people and about "knowledge-based" jobs or something like that. So yeah, industry felt more free, I think, to fire people and run overseas to find all the cheap cheap practically-slave labor in places like China or India (they were going to do that anyway, right - this just gave them better press). And you'd see people training to become IT people or whatever they were going to do in the "new economy."

Of course, trouble was there just weren't the jobs for these people in the new economy, period. Just like you're saying, these people have become superfluous to U.S.-based corporations.

And it's not just these people. Tell me that people training in IT to often have a lot of trouble finding a job.

It's not about jobs, it's about profits.

But come on - "... you just can't go and kill all those folks who are no longer needed. Ideally we could get rid of those in society as we replaced them with machines." Ideally? Hmmm...tell that to all these people who aren't able to get work. Tell the guy working two or three jobs to keep his family afloat that we want robots and computers to do his jobs, and ideally we'd just like to get rid of him. Heil Hitler, right?

Hope there's not too many people smarter than you concentrating their wealth at the top of the pile (and from the sounds of it, there just might be, buddy...) They might want to get rid of you once they can figure out how to program and sysadmin without you.

In the meantime, if you do have any problems, think about India! Business is booming. I'm sure you can find a nice job there. And if salaries become too burdensome there (don't want too many programmers demanding 8 or 9 dollars an hour) - there's always Africa!

Re:Who will terminate the manual laborers?

[Peganthyrus]

IMHO a lot of them are "stupid" because they've been trained to be stupid by the schools and culture - when kids are taught to sit down, shut up, do endless repetitive work, and not ask any questions, they stop learning. Kids are learning machines, but the schools are anti-learning.

We raise people to be meat robots, and it's only a small percentage that refuse. We keep treating them as meat robots in their jobs. When they stop having to be a meat robot all the time... some will sink into indolence, but how many will start to get bored, and start doing more interesting things?

Re:Who will terminate the manual laborers?

[Overzeetop]

I'm not saying I'm for it, I'm making an observation and saying that there's discontinuity between the workplace which will exist and the workforce which is available. Personally, I think humans would be better off with between 1% and 10% of their numbers...above that it's simply unsustainable. And, since you'll probably ask - yes, my family has fewer children than adults.

Stupid. Written off. Underprivileged. Poorly motivated. Call them whatever you like. There is a large segment of the population who - for whatever reason - have very poor problem solving and independent thinking skills. I have worked in enough jobs with really smart people to know that I'm no genius. I know lots of people smarter than I am. But, wow, you get out of some of those high end fields and you'd be amazed at what passes for average.

My daughter just entered school, and I've met a lot of her friends, and seen a lot of what these kids do. I am absolutely appalled at how little their parents seem to value their education. Here's an example - every day the kids take home a worksheet that shows what they've done, and what they are planning to do. There's one kid in the class who, after a month, had 20 of these papers in her backpack. She's a pretty smart kid, and seem to be interested in learning. I asked her why she still had the papers in her backpack, and she told me it was because her parents never took them out. So, after a month of school, these parents have no idea what she's been doing, and apparently don't care. Lest you think they didn't know, the class had two orientations with the parents - one group session, and one in person with the teacher - in both sessions they were explicit in the need for the parent to look at the progress sheets each night, both for information on what was happening in school and to help encourage the work their children were doing.

I've decided that more than half the parents just don't care, and I live in a pretty "care oriented" area, with many people being professionals and university professors. School is more than just daycare - it's an absolution of all responsibility to the technical education of their children.

So don't get me wrong - I'm not out to eliminate some theoretical lower class, but there is - without question - a growing disparity between what we need to continue our "progress" and "efficiency" and the workforce that expects us to pay wages which feed, clothe, and house them. Hell, I think there is a traditional belief that people are just there to produce labor - like having a dozen children so you can work the farm. As a society, we seem to have intellectually moved beyond human muscle as a machine, but we haven't really moved away from the child-rearing and teaching methods that is geared towards producing mindless machines. Television and movies have exacerbated the problem because those who "learned" to be mindless machines now see how the elite live (or, rather, how someone fictitiously portrays how the elite would live if they never had to work) and expect that that lifestyle is owed to them for the mindless work they do.

I would be happy if everyone who didn't plan on focusing their energies on raising independent, critical thinking children would just not have them, and those who do would do so with a single child, 2 if they felt they had the resources (not just money - resources like time, patience, capacity for love and encouragement, etc.) to do do so. Having more than two (intentionally) is, imho, simply selfish. Just keeping to those teachings would get the population back to something manageable and sustainable in 150 years or so. No - don't even bring up China. I'm not talking about some "one child" rule, I'm talking about the population - every individual person - deciding that the best thing for everyone is to do this of their own accord. To come to the realization that having children does not make you an adult; that God will not love you more for all the new children you have; that children cost a lot of money to raise properly ($300k

Re:Will noly slow things down.

[dotancohen]

Been known to happen

Another piece of the puzzle

[Animats]

Slowly these things get better. Automatically guided vehicles have been around for about 25 years, and they keep improving. Early ones were guided by wires buried in the floor, and essentially ran on tracks. Now they have much more flexibility.

About fifteen years ago there was a research project which used small forklift-like robots. These worked together to move loads too big for one to lift. Two such robots could pick up and move a couch. That idea needs to be revived.

Quietly, the machinery for moving containers around ports is becoming automated. Several ports now have large, autonomous machines moving containers around. Antwerp has had this for years, but there the container sits on top of the AGV. The new approach is automated straddle cranes, the same cranes normally driven by humans. The article points out that the robots drive better than people; fuel and tire consumption are down 30%. The big container cranes themselves have had vision systems and LIDAR units for years; many are now fully automated.

Defrag? Manual Override by the Hoomanz!

[Tsu Dho Nimh]

"I wonder how long it takes to defrag the entire warehouse. Heaven help them if it's a bubble sort. B-Tree perhaps? Oh -- and what about lost clusters?"

I worked on the docs for something similar - a robot fetch to conveyer packing - and there are periodic "defrags" where humans with barcode scanners check each bin and inventory the contents, then adjust inventory to match what is REALLY in the bins. Robots are powered down for this :)

The packers could also send a bin off to the Orwellian-sounding "readjustment station" if the bin they were sent by the robots didn't have what it was supposed to have.

This is how postal workers end up going nuts...

[servodave]

I worked in a 90% automated factory about a decade ago. We made automotive assemblies. There were maybe 25 fully automated robots on six lines that all served the function of creating this one product. In essence you could say that this was a 100,000 sq foot machine with maybe 50 humans feeding it.

The initial cool factor of being payed well to load and babysit the robots never quite wears off, although you do acclimate to the situation. After a while and you could actually feel the pulse of the factory as each part was produced. It was sort of semi organic--maybe like being inside a Borg Cube ship or something. Two hours into the shift it was hypnotizing. If there was a breakdown of one of the robots everything just went to hell for a few minutes and it would take you a bit to pick up on it if you were involved. The result was like those stupid visa commercials where the guy pays cash and causes everything to explode around him. It was often hilarious to watch another production line self-destruct with shit flying everywhere and people freaking out over red lights and alarms.

It was industrial and I hated every second of it and was bored. So was almost everyone else. However the people and management in that work environment were decent. In spite of feeding parts and sub-assemblies into robots all day long we were treated like people. Absolutely the best HR of anywhere I have ever worked in 20 years of working. You knew where you stood and it was 10 hours of work for 10 hours of decent pay. The floor bosses were competent and fair which I suppose made this possible.

Overall that fact that you could have a decent discussion on something interesting on lunch break was the best part. With the exception of a couple of religious zealots, very few outright sociopaths were hired. That upper 20% mentioned in previous comments is what HR was after to staff the place. 200 of the 8,000 that applied were hired and sent to three months of focused College level training. Since it was Ann Arbor they probably would have 500 useful candidates a month if they were not excluding the chronic weed heads as a matter of course. The fact that this is 4% of the people who applied says that the top 20% don't often go after these jobs.

At the time I just needed a job to get through college (and that was the story of many who made it in to the shop floor.) For the Midwest the selection of the people I was working with in a blue collar environment was amazing: Lots of momma-cries-every-night-over-junior-who-could-have-been-something type slackers or college dropouts (these were usually the SMART pot heads who knew how to get through the drug tests...) A Russian scientist and his wife (chemists, both of them, I think) who came here for a job. A completely and totally bat-shit bonkers former wife of a University professor. A recently fired accountant who was a (Mostly) job functional Alcoholic. A recent graduate of the masters program of the local Nuclear Engineering department who could not find a job in the market at the time. Many, many nurses or soon to be nurses. A few ex-armed forces skilled people trying to get their heads screwed on right after the first Golf war. A bunch of married folk trying to finish college.

So, the thing is you can hire that upper 20% but these are the people who would probably get good jobs somewhere ANYWAY. It's also not going to be a very satisfying job or sustainable in that they know this is a waste of what they can do with their lives. At three years of the constant, mind numbing, droning of the machines I lasted longer than some. However I was clearly a BURNT OUT shell of a person by the time I left there. Scary, since I knew this was only a JOB to me and it still had that effect--others had decided to make this a career and were in for a long, long haul.

The company had a '20 year and out' policy with full benefits and pension at the end. Considering what 3 years did to me and most of my co-workers, I think a person would end up like Tolkiens Gollum before they made it to that point. (Grasping at their gold retirement ring and whispering 'my...precious...' in their dark basement until they meet a truly horrible end due to their psychosis.)

already exists in one form...

[zogger]

..and that's digital. Think about it, code is a combination of engineered schematics morphed with prose, it is text based robotics, text that "does stuff" and can run unattended. One of the main goals of a server is to get it set up so much you never hardly have to touch it, but it will keep chugging along, adapting itself to loads and demands, etc, text based robotic "service". And code can be sold or leased or rented temporarily or given away, same as a tangible. So we have the double precedent, biological entities as temps, and digital entities. We have cars for hire, taxis, buses, rental cars, that are temporary. We have temporary lodging, hotels, motels, RVs that are mobile. Temporary quartermaster services, restaurants and prepared take out food to go.

So..eventually we'll have rentabot! (outside of IRC and the rooshian mafiyeh)

I bet rentabrothelbot comes first, judging by human nature and all...