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Amazon Robot Contest May Accelerate Warehouse Automation
moon_unit2 writes Amazon is organizing an event to spur the development of more nimble-fingered product-packing robots. Participating teams will earn points by locating products sitting somewhere on a stack of shelves, retrieving them safely, and then packing them into cardboard shipping boxes. Robots that accidentally crush a cookie or drop a toy will have points deducted. The contest is already driving new research on robot vision and manipulation, and it may offer a way to judge progress made in the past few years in machine intelligence and dexterity. Robots capable of advanced manipulation could eventually take on many simple jobs that are still done by hand.
There's plenty of jobs at stake with this kind of thing... Amazon could easily cut staff if the item picking items could do everything, but even robotic pullers wear out over time. Seems like it's a difference between brute force people and those that fix robotic systems.
I remember reading articles recently where workers complained about how awful it is to work at Amazon. More robots seems like a good solution to that problem.
Tell ya what, if we come back and the robots have slaughtered all the employees, I owe you a coke.
Now it just needs to fail hard and send me an expensive new computer instead of a usb cable.
Robots capable of advanced manipulation could eventually take on many simple jobs that are still done by hand.
Just think with this advancement Walowitz would never have had to go to the ER.
And don't worry, it can't turn into Skynet because Amazon doesn't have nuclear weapons.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
It's such a better name for a contest that uses robots to perform monotonous jobs currently done by hand.
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Attach a standardized handle to every item. Have the robot look for and grab the handle.
The handle should be such that when grabbed by the robot in correct orientation, it can properly support the full weight of the item (or the box/packaging containing the item) + some amount of additional torque incurred while moving.
The handle can either go out with the item or be removed by the robot for reuse. If it goes out with the item, it needs to be reusable/recyclable or represent minimal additional packaging material.
Many small items already have the standard ____()____ hole for rack display. Make it easily recognizable (contrasting border) and give robots a little finger to grab it.
Many light items in cardboard boxes have standardized cut-flap handles. Give robots a little hand to grab it.
Heavier items in cardboard boxes often have handles. Standardize, give hand.
Think of it as pallets for individual items. When shipping items you don't need to determine how best to pack, handle, move, or store them, let alone program a robot to do so. You just use a forklift and grab the pallet. All of the thinking for the other shit for each individual item is done by the people making the individual item.
Robots capable of advanced manipulation could eventually take on many simple jobs that are still done by hand.
Like picking strawberries, or any of many other agricultural products currently harvested by migrant workers (often of questionable immigrant status).
They will do evaluations to see which is cheaper, of course. A great many low-paid pickers, including management overhead, verses a much smaller number of high-skilled, high-paid service people and a higher outlay cost. One serviceperson could maintain a great many robots, each of which could replace two or three human pickers.
I've worked in an Amazon warehouse.
They already have robots drive shelves of product to the pickers, so all they do is stand there and pluck things off shelves all day.
The problems at Amazon aren't the work, it's the artificial conditions imposed by management. ALl workers are treated like thieves, the facility is incredibly cold (like 60F in summer cold, when it's 90F outside) in places, way too hot in others (100F+), there are only cement floors with terrible rubber mats at standing locations, and workers are held WAY too closely to their time punches (i.e. it's a 5 minute walk from your station to the break room, your 15 minute break is now a 5 minute break, too bad, so sad).
It's also one of those workplaces that emphasizes "culture" heavily, aka does daily pep rallies and wastes a ton of time on false morale, instead of trying to have happier workers.
Raise it $25 million then we'll think about it.
Looking at this, I see it as possible in the future for amazon to require manufacturers and sellers to package items in standard size and shape boxes to make it easy for the bots.
Silence is a state of mime.
High paid? With millions of unemployed waiting in line for this or another job?
Seriously, am I crazy in thinking that these contests are hugely exploitative? The prize is 25k, while the article also mentions that amazons current robots are from a company it bought for 678m!
You're wrong. Humans are an automation system for genes. There is absolutely nothing you can't automate.
High paid? With millions of unemployed waiting in line for this or another job?
Even if you can get the pesky feds away, and pay them less than minimum wage, lazy, entitled, human workers still tend to waste 4-8 hours/day 'sleeping' and engaging in rudimentary grooming behaviors; and their lack of work ethic means that if you try to pay them starvation wages they may just decide to go starve somewhere else, and at least work fewer hours while doing so.
The effect is most obvious in places where automation is ridiculously efficient(it's pretty tricky for even your most downtrodden human to be cheap enough to stuff PCBs more efficiently than a pick-and-place, for instance); but it's true across the board that no matter how hard you beat them down, humans still have a price floor. Even slaves aren't necessarily cheaper than robots.
Do you suspect that this is a product of ineptitude, or an exploration of the theory that degradation enhances compliance?
Yeah, there's always two ways to title a tech story, the utopian and the dystopian implications of a coming-of-age sci-fi technology. I'm beginning to think maybe only a form of democratic communism will save us from the techno barons of the future. That or the spread of molecular manufacturing, where the only resource you need is the dirt in your backyard, unless the hoi polloi have all been by the time packed into mega-prison-like kilometer-high apartment complexes.
Obligatory: I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dj2S9bbJlq4
Iam Robotics has an existing piece picking robot that is now doing autonomous picking
Reminds me of going to WalMart one time, and I couldn't find any people to help me find something. Turns out they had them all huddled over in sporting goods having a floor peptalk and then some stupid cheer with clapping involved. I think it's designed to brainwashing those who aren't satisfied with their job there that it's a good place to be.
It's so nice to be able to replace what would likely be a handful of salaried employees simply by giving out a "prize" to the best of a group of people who spend their time working on your problem. I can't wait until all jobs have given way to this new opportunity to win a fraction of a salary.
Back in the eighties, when Gibson was writing about workers "singing company hymns", I thought it was comic relief. Is there any end to the indignities we will heap upon the working class?
There is absolutely nothing you can't automate.
Yeah, and a whole ton of stuff you shouldn't automate.
Tell ya what, if we come back and the robots have slaughtered all the employees, I owe you a coke.
It happened in Oklahoma, September 24, 2014
No, not all the employees were slaughtered, but it was still a terrible terrible thing
Couple of links you ought to read -
http://news.yahoo.com/oklahoma-beheading--terrorism-or-workplace-violence-184638839.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaughan_Foods_beheading_incident
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2014/0928/Oklahoma-beheading-Was-it-an-act-of-terrorism-video
Let me guess... the prize for this contest will be some sort of Amazon Gift Card.
I work for a company whose motor division was competing to get designed into a 'robot' to shuttle around merchandise in Amazon's warehouses. It's a big commercial thing. They are developing this technology in a big way.
But contests like this let them 'outsource' their R&D to people who will do the work for free, or for the peanuts that an 'award' for a contest represents.
Sorry to be so negative about it. They should hire professionals to do this stuff, not exploit the rest of us.
no minimum wage and no health insurance = hillary clinton 2016
I think Amazon's robot driven shelves is an example of good enough robots. The computationally difficult part is optically recognizing the product, using a hand (organic or metallic) to move product from shelf, into box. Instead of wasting human brain time, by walking across a warehouse, robots move the shelves and boxes to the human. The human spends its time on the computationally difficult task of moving product from shelves and boxes. I think there is diminishing returns for further automation.
General Motors has tried this a number of times at a variety of different warehouses including the National Parts Distribution Centers in Canada at Woodstock, Edmonton and in the US at the facilities in Ohio and Colorado. Even at the wage that most of the people make between $21-29/hr they're more efficient, have fewer errors, and process the orders more quickly than any automation system did. And they've been running tests and trials of it since the 1980's, and every time a human beats the machine. In the one case where they went with a full automation field trial, the warehouse was losing money. Where as a warehouse like Woodstock makes money hand over fist.
Om, nomnomnom...
Which would be why Amazon is improving the technology. Human workers aren't going to get an better - but robots can be improved. If they aren't good enough right now, invest some money in engineering until they are.
In other words, just more of the tech industry erasing jobs, lowering wages, and generally making life miserable for regular people like they've been doing for years.
That was exactly the same reasoning that GM invested heavily in robotics to do the same job, and after 35 years of screwing around with it they simply threw their hands up over it.
Om, nomnomnom...
" the theory that degradation enhances compliance"
We must work for the same company....
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
"Robots that accidentally crush a cookie or drop a toy will have points deducted."
What about robots that *intentionally* crush cookies and drop toys?
More proof that we are facing a looming unemployment crisis as robots become more and more adept at handling tasks requiring dexterity and decision making. Smart politicians would be pushing for re-education of those likely to be impacted by massive layoffs now, before they begin to occur and strain societal resources. But you and see the fault in that logic, seeing how politicians can't see beyond the end of the week. It is inevitable that the rapid pace of new tech will swell unemployment ranks in jobs once thought "AI-proof". It isn't something that should lead to hysterics, but rather studied and understood, so that we can make preparations today. The concepts of self-driving cars/trucks, automated cleaning, lawn service, factory work, warehouse work, surgery, etc. are all exciting, but have real impacts on jobs.