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

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.

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.