Fetch Robotics Unveils Warehouse Robots

gthuang88 writes: Warehouse automation has become a big business, with Amazon's Kiva robots leading the way. Now a startup called Fetch Robotics is rolling out a pair of new robots that can pick boxes off of shelves, pass them to each other, and carry the goods to a shipping station. Fetch, led by Willow Garage veteran Melonee Wise, is competing with companies like Amazon's Kiva Systems, Rethink Robotics, and Harvest Automation to develop dexterous, mobile robots for retail, distribution, and manufacturing.

Comments

fetch

[turkeydance]

that robot before it does it again.

Re:fetch

[durrr]

Next revolution in robotics.
"Fetich Robotics Unveils Whorehouse Robots"

Re:fetch

[amber_of_luxor]

The horror of all those dollar a blow working girls no longer having a job.

This is news - how?

[Runaway1956]

At LEAST fifteen years ago, more like twenty years ago, I delivered freight to a Mary Kay plant that had this. Perhaps those robots were less advanced than Amazon's robots - but then, Mary Kay has had plenty of time to improve on their robots.

I'll be honest - I didn't have any opportunity to just stand around and watch those robots, or time to interrogate the people working at the plant. And, no way in hell would anyone let me play with those robots. All that I can tell you for sure, is that robots were wandering the plant floor, carrying articles from hither to thither. Some would disappear in between the aisles of warehouse shelves, carrying a box of something, and reappear empty. Others would go between the shelves empty, and come back with something. Most would then aim themselves through the doors, into the plant proper, presumably to deliver those items to a work station, or to get items from a work station.

Oh - yeah - it's wonderful. We're moving closer to that imagined post-prosperity world, huh? I'm not believing that the ruling class is going to share any of that prosperity with the masses, but, yeah, we're moving closer to it.

Re:This is news - how?

[R3d M3rcury]

Perhaps those robots were less advanced than Amazon's robots

But were they pink?

Re:This is news - how?

[Antique Geekmeister]

I'm afraid, son or daughter, that this is why some of us oldsters started learning the software that runs various robots about 25 years ago. I'm also afraid that your bet on that "geezer" card is making me raise the pot by about 10 years and call. Unless someone else wants to bid in this game?

The key when confronted by awareness of changing technology and workplace requirements is not to bemoan who will have the power. It's to join, or at least make sure you have the skills to work for, the powerful.

Re:This is news - how?

[Runaway1956]

I'm color blind, or color impaired. Quite naturally, I don't really see pink most of the time. Hot pink, in bright sunlight, yeah, but there are shades that I just don't see. I'm not sure if the robots were pink or not - they were a light color, could have been beige, white, or some light shade of pink.

Mary Kay does run pink Freightliners and trailers up and down the road though. Some of them are dark enough that I can actually see the pink, others are lighter, and they just look white to me. Most of the trailers look white to me, with a pink stripe down the side.

This is what Google offered when I did an image search.

https://www.google.com/search?...

Re:This is news - how?

[Runaway1956]

Maybe you can answer your own question, if you'll answer a couple other questions first.

Who, exactly, would decide to dispatch 10,000 robots to Nepal?
Who, exactly, has the resources to actually send them?
Who, exactly, has the AUTHORITY to make that decision, and to appropriate resources to that mission?

And, finally, how, exactly, would that mission benefit those people who own that authority and those resources?

There are a number of conspiracy theories floating around, regarding the depopulation of the earth. Taken all together, the general idea is, once the wealthy and ruling classes no longer have any use for the masses, they are just going to get rid of the masses. I don't buy into any of those theories - but a thinking person should do a little thinking before he dismisses them out of hand.

I'll grant that having those robots available would be beneficial to the masses, but no real benefit would accrue to the ruling classes.

Re:This is news - how?

[Moridineas]

Hey, this is off-topic, but I've been interested in the topic of color blindness recently, after figuring out that my son is color blind. He has not been officially diagnosed as colorblind (and he is only 4), but he has a lot of trouble with certain shades or blends, and the Ishihara plate graphics that we tried online seemed pretty definitive as well.

I'm just curious about your experience. My son seems to have NO trouble with red and green most of the time (which I didn't expect), but rather colors like purples, oranges, even yellow.

Another person I've spoken with said something like "I can figure out green...and I can figure out red...but don't ask me to find a red bird in a green tree!"

I'm just curious if these impressions match your experiences at all?

Thanks for your insights!

Re:This is news - how?

[drinkypoo]

We're not gonna need seven billion repairmen. We're not gonna need seven /million/ repairmen.

The truth is that we're not gonna need seven repairmen. Self-driving cars will deliver robot repairmen and new parts to factories too small to have their own in-house, if such a thing even exists. Remember, the trend in everything is more and more modularity. We're only going to need people to do program and design, and more and more aspects of those jobs are being automated. Sooner or later, people will design new components (with mostly-automated tools) and then robots will use genetic (and other) algorithms to assemble those components into designs. And then Skynet, I guess.

Even if we don't reach Singularity and disappear in a puff of logic, there's going to be literally almost no jobs which need doing by humans, soon. Barring, I guess, nuclear war or ecolapse. Both seem relatively viable.

Re:This is news - how?

[drinkypoo]

But were they pink?

pink robots

Re:This is news - how?

[Runaway1956]

Well - I think that I made it fairly clear that I had seen robots doing roughly the same job that these robots are designed to do. I think that my post was less binary than you imply. There are groups doing pretty amazing things with robots today. When they untethered that dog/wolf robot, that was actually newsworthy. When it first learned to walk over rubble, that was then newsworthy. Prior to that, when it first learned to walk, that was then newsworthy.

The reason that I didn't consider this story to be especially newsworthy is, the tasks that these particular robots are performing were already being done by robots a lifetime ago. (My sons are all in their twenties, so twenty years is a "lifetime".)

Among other newsworthy robot stories being published today, are the automated facial recognition stories. And, another story about identifying High Occupancy Vehicle scofflaws. Bomb disposal and ordinance will stay interesting for a long time to come, even if the robots don't get a whole lot better at the job.

Picking stuff off a shelf, while navigating a nice clean, smooth even concrete floor? I'm sorry, my friend, but I can't see the newsworthiness here.

I would have found this story more interesting if some young parent were gushing over their toddler's newly learned ability to pick stuff off of shelves, and carry it across the room, and place it on a table. "Junior just LOVES to help Mother set the table for dinner!"

Robots are coming of age now. How much interest would be generated, if someone published a story about his/her fifteen year old daughter learning to move cutlery from a drawer, onto the dining room table? Not so much, huh?

Re:This is news - how?

[Runaway1956]

Color vision at four years old. I couldn't tell the green from the brown Crayola. And, the purple or violet crayola looked blue to me.

Red flowers in a field of green are pretty much invisible, as you state. Many times as a youth, my mother would exclaim over some pretty red flowers as we drove by. I would look, see nothing, and just look at her.

I should have realized that I was color blind around age twelve. Got interested in electronics, found some schematics, and tore into old electrical gadgets that didn't work. I did alright with solid color wires, but wires that were striped or dotted with alternating colors were just beyond me. I remember a red wire with some kind of stripes on it, particularly. Initially, I identified that wire, and started tracing it. Soon - it just bled into some wildly ugly mess, and I wasn't even sure that it was a red wire any longer.

There are two distinct kinds of poor color vision - one involves red, the other involves green. Many men have problems with one or the other. Those of us who have BOTH kinds are somewhat rare. Not especially rare, but somewhat.

And, color deficiency isn't "equal" among us, either. I've read many times that one in four men is at least a little bit color blind, while only one in a thousand women is even slightly color blind. Your son may have less deficiency than me, or he may have more.

Personally, all of the purple, violet, lilac, rose, pink, lavender family blends together. And, maroon. I bought a car in the seventies. It was a beautifully done, well polished black Chevy Impala. Almost a jet black, it was very dark. Drove it home, and my mama admired it, saying what a lovely color it was - but she didn't think that I liked maroon. Looked at her like she was nuts - told her it was a black car. Ooooooooops. I took another look at the title in my hand, and it also said the car was maroon. Oh well - I drove it just like it was black!

Greens are a little harder to explain. I see shades of green, but I guess I don't see exactly what everyone else sees. Mostly, when I look out across my field, or into the trees, I see varying shades of darkness - greens running into browns. There have been times that I've had hints of what I may be missing. A bright sunlit morning on the Pennsylvania turnpike, right after a rain, with the sun behind me, highlighting bright yellow-greens, picking out darker greens, all quite distinctive from the brown trunks, and suddenly glinting off of the Pa. state patrol car on the side of the road. (the rest of THAT story is even further off topic - I'll summarize with "cop cars can't catch motorcycles in traffic all the time")

When I joined the Navy, I was contracted in as an Aviation Ordinance man. Got to boot camp, took their vision tests, and was informed that the Navy had zero use for me around aircraft, or around ordinance, or around electronics. Color blind sailors are restricted to paperwork, supply work, chipping paint, and other unexciting work. I didn't want to go home, so I took a job in supply.

Has bad color vision hurt me? I don't guess so. I've had a happy, adventurous life. Some doors were closed to me, but I'm so damned good that I just opened up other doors, and found good times there instead. So, I didn't get to hang bombs and missiles on aircraft - instead, I counted beans, bolts, and bullets on a destroyer. I had a great time sight seeing around the world all the same. And, I paid my dues along the way.

Color vision probably won't be a big deal for your son, either. He won't be a world renowned electronics engineer, most likely. But, there is a whole world of other things that he can excel at. Maybe he'll be like me, and race motorcycles against the cops. Oh - you probably didn't want to hear that. Don't worry - not all color blind people are as depraved as I am - he'll probably do well. Normally, it's just not a big deal.

(now you are probably asking yourself just exactly how serious I am, LMAO)

Re:This is news - how?

[amber_of_luxor]

> I'm not sure if the robots were pink or not - they were a light color, could have been beige, white, or some light shade of pink.

In a fit of moronic stupidity, Mary Kay let its trademarked color lapse. Since then, the company has been scrambling to find a shade of pink that they can claim to be theirs, and theirs alone. Consequently, their livery has ranged from a pearly white-pink, to a very dark purple-pink, wandering through both orange-pink, and a greenish-pink.

Re:This is news - how?

[Runaway1956]

Ahhhh - that MIGHT explain some of my confusion. I had just ASSumed that any problems associated with colors were my own problems.

Capital always competes with labour

[roman_mir]

I think I got modded down at least 2000 times in the last 16 years or so for saying this particular simple thing: capital competes with labour.

Labour and capital are in competition, there is always some price point, where it is cheaper to invest capital to reduce reliance on labour and the opposite is also true, should labour become cheap enough it can win against capital for some time at least.

What are the factors that lead towards labour being more expensive than capital? Well, in the so called 'developed' nations that would be government created inflation (paper fiat printing and interest rate manipulation), business regulations (which are taxes) and other income and wealth taxes.

The price of labour in the free market may or may not in some cases lead to investment of capital in order to displace the said labour but in a non-free market system that the so called 'developed' world is running the price of labour is artificially high, pushed by regulations and laws and taxes high enough for capital to win over and over and over and over.

Companies like Uber and many others will come up with ways to bring down the cost of labour by getting around regulations and laws (and hopefully taxes at some point) in order to make labour competitive again. For now we are not there yet.

Various economic indicators in the USA are showing a significant slow down in the economy, it's systemic but the TV will make you think this is all weather related, which is pure nonsense. Weather happens, so do other things, these things shouldn't cause the so called 'economists' miss their targets all the time by such huge margins. The USA (and some other) economy is dying the death of trillions of cuts administered by the government and various 'progressive' agenda but also by the mix of corporate/state agenda that prevents free market from working. Free market is then blamed, the idiots say: 'free market fails' or whatnot, when the reality is that it is their system of government that fails to protect individual liberties and freedoms required for the free market to exist.

There will be no easy fix for this failure to protect individual liberties, it will be a painful and very expensive crash, the question is what do you do after that crash?

Re:Capital always competes with labour

[Joe_Dragon]

or just riot and let the jail take care of feeding you and giving you a doctor

Re:Capital always competes with labour

[koan]

There won't be any jail or doctors after rioting because of this.

Re:Capital always competes with labour

[Okian Warrior]

After the crash? You make sure you have lots of guns and your food is locked down. Then lock n load because all starving impoverished libtard SJWs will be desperate and ready to kill anyone to stay alive. Well their fantasy will have dissolved right before them and it will be society's duty to "clean up the parasites"

Apropos of nothing, I note that we are in a deflationary cycle right now, for the first quarter of 2015.

Surprisingly, this little tidbit made hardly a ripple in the mainstream news outlets.

So... is this the recession that causes the crash, or will that be after the next recession?

Re:Capital always competes with labour

[roman_mir]

Ok, but look past the initial reaction, what are the next 20 years going to be like past the first shock of a crash? Let's say the dollar and the bond markets collapse, the stock and other asset markets go through the roof as people are fleeing the dollar, but housing market collapses anyway, because almost all of it is borrowed money and almost nobody has real savings to buy a house outright. So money generating ventures gain relative value while money pits (houses) lose value once fiat dies and is displaced by real market money (whatever that may be, but I set my bets in a particular way).

I don't think the next 20 years are going to be about rebuilding socialism, they are going to be rebuilding individual freedoms and thus opportunities, companies will spring out into existence, figuring out ways to help the people that ended up in these conditions, helping them to do something productive and get some payment doing some of those productive things.

I think the next 20 years after the crash are going to be about rebuilding the economy but the only way to do it would be by reducing the role of government to something entirely negligible.

There is no other way to survive when all of the assumptions and basic institutions fall on their face and disappear in the poof of actual logic (can't steal money forever, can't borrow forever, have to pay back at some point).

I think we are going to be moving away from collectivism of all forms (communism, socialism, fascism) and towards freedom again actually, maybe I am a bit premature on this but it is bound to happen in a global economy with at least some entrepreneurial people. The trick is to program the mistakes of the past into machines, who would remember the problems of the past and become certain rule-setters as to what direction any future attempt at setting up a government structure takes.

AFAIC governments should not exist at all, only individuals and their companies should exist and I think the future is going to move in that direction past the inevitable impending self-destruction of the current system.

Re:Capital always competes with labour

[roman_mir]

Those inflation numbers are hogwash, do not buy into the agenda that government is pushing, the interest rates are at 0% and have been at 0 for 6 years. Never before has this actually happened, never before has anybody tied their economy to 0% interest rates for such a long time. It is not going to be possible to get off the 0% interest rates without an economic collapse (which is inevitable and actually required to fix the issues that have accumulated in the economy since the creation of the Federal reserve and switch to the paper money and paper debt).

As to prices, they are going up, not down. There are no prices that are going down, actually even oil had a steady growth this year, what prices are going down? The only thing that is going down is real employment and productivity.

Also the fake negative inflation rate was used to adjust the GDP in a way that makes it look bigger, all of this is complete propaganda.

AFAIC deflation is not a problem, inflation is. Inflation is what has been killing modern paper money based economies, deflation is a bogeyman that never materialised. The only reason the so called mainstream 'economists' are scaring people with deflation is because there was deflation during the Great Depression, which government fought with gigantic amount of money printing (and farming output purchases with printed money that was ploughed straight into the ground to try and keep prices up rather than allowing people to eat cheaper at lower prices during a depression). Depression was not caused by deflation, deflation was a natural consequence of a post-inflationary collapse and it was proper and necessary but it was fought against with fake money printing the same way they did with QE1, 2, 3 and the next one and the one that will come after, the QE infinity.

There will be no rising interest rates coming out of the Fed, they can't do it, not without crashing the economy and Fed will not be crashing the economy on purpose any time soon (especially not before the coming elections).

Again, the inflation is not negative, it is very much positive and way higher than 2% that the Fed says it wants. 2% inflation rate to be a target.... that's a joke. 2% interest rate target was introduced decades ago in New Zealand I think as a CEILING target, once they hit it, they were supposed to raise interest rates to fight inflation.

Anyway, if you truly believe the government nonsense after decades of lying they have perpetrated upon the people, the false pretences for wars, the false economy, the false money, then I don't think I'll be getting through to you in this comment, but I had to write this as a response at least for myself.

Re:Capital always competes with labour

[khallow]

What are the factors that lead towards labour being more expensive than capital? Well, in the so called 'developed' nations that would be government created inflation (paper fiat printing and interest rate manipulation), business regulations (which are taxes) and other income and wealth taxes.

Inflation tends to nail both labor and capital. Resources and materials hold their value, but wages don't track inflation. And capital gains tax is a problem for capital.

Regulations aren't taxes because for the most part the state isn't getting revenue from the regulation. There are ways to turn such things into an effective tax such as US police departments generating funding via civil forfeiture laws, but it's not the default state of regulation.

Various economic indicators in the USA are showing a significant slow down in the economy, it's systemic but the TV will make you think this is all weather related, which is pure nonsense. Weather happens, so do other things, these things shouldn't cause the so called 'economists' miss their targets all the time by such huge margins. The USA (and some other) economy is dying the death of trillions of cuts administered by the government and various 'progressive' agenda but also by the mix of corporate/state agenda that prevents free market from working. Free market is then blamed, the idiots say: 'free market fails' or whatnot, when the reality is that it is their system of government that fails to protect individual liberties and freedoms required for the free market to exist.

I agree.

Re:Capital always competes with labour

[Paradise Pete]

After the crash? You make sure you have lots of guns and your food is locked down.

If it comes down to that I need only one gun and one bullet to solve all my problems. I'm checking out.

Re:And this is where it begins.

[peragrin]

Warehouses are slow to adapt. And run on low margins 20-30 years is more reasonable. Because warehouse rarely move and will require massive overhaul. Hell barcoding is only deployed to 40-50% of warehouses. That alone should tell you how low margin warehouses operate. Barcoding with software and hardware is $10k, another 10k to deploy it, yet most warehouses can't afford that.

Huh

[koan]

led by Willow Garage veteran Melonee Wise, is competing with companies like Amazon's Kiva Systems, Rethink Robotics, and Harvest Automation to develop dexterous, mobile robots for retail, distribution, and manufacturing.

OK lets adjust that..

led by Willow Garage veteran Melonee Wise, is competing with companies like Amazon's Kiva Systems, Rethink Robotics, and Harvest Automation to further gut the employment market and jobs/opportunities by replacing humans with robots.

FIFY

Rant Rant a Rerant

[JimSadler]

Obviously these robotics will displace a huge number of workers, permanently! Yet no social or political action is being taken to form a quality way of life for the millions about to become permanently unemployed. This issue is urgent and threatens to bring down modern governments. There is a point at which no business can survive if enough people have no money to spend. And counter to what one might suspect the faster we can go into a total non human worker environment the easier it will be. We will have no choice but to pay people not to work soon and the calamity will exist because some human workers will be needed yet the labor supply will be so overwhelming that wages will decline like a crashing rocket. People will resent it if they are the only one on the block required to work for a living. We need an entirely new socio-economic system to be up and running right now. The same problem exists with the rising seas issue. So far the bulk of the public is not suffering from rising sea issues but they are in for a big shock. Tax funding for the massive and numerous projects that must be undertaken are already starting to take place. Imagine the funds it will take just to keep a place like Brooklyn protected from rising seas. yet nobody seems aware that tax dollars must be collected to fund the planning and beginning of the huge changes that must take place. Consider US HWY 1 and how many hundreds of miles of that highway must be elevated as quite a bit of that major highway are only two or three feet above sea level. High tides or storms will easily swamp many portions of US1 as well as A1A.

Stop trying to make fetch happen

[Jeremi]

It's not going to happen.

Re:And this is where it begins.

[LordWabbit2]

Maybe for the smaller operations. I have family who work for a large retailer, every year the pickers go on strike for higher wages/bonus/whatever and the DC's ground to a halt. They are starting a pilot DC which is fully automated. DC is already built, all that's left is the integration into the current system. I would also like to point out that I currently live in a third world country.

AMAZING!!!!

[Lumpy]

Companies like Dematic have been doing that for decades. Welcome to the 1990's FETCH!

Re:And this is where it begins.

[Kjella]

Running on low margins doesn't help much if the competition is undercutting you with lower costs. At least in the bragging video komplett.no made with AutoStore, they claimed going from a picker performance of 100 pieces/day to 100 pieces/hour = 8x performance as the system lines up the boxes at the picking station. Pick, scan, pick, scan, pick, scan, put in box for shipping, scan shipping box, done as opposed to running around the warehouse, particularly for new employees who have a hard time finding things. It also has other benefits like making employee theft much harder, since nothing silently disappears off the shelves or gets misplaced and they know what boxes you've had access to. The chance of accidents is vastly reduced, the storage area itself can be run in the dark and can operate colder/hotter than humans would like saving money on AC and heating.

Now obviously there's a solid investment cost but the question is how long can you afford to not make the investment? It might only be a nibble each time but higher running costs will add up and eat away at your profits too. Just look at all the other industrial robots, none of them were cheap to start with but those with money to invest will make the business case that in the long run it'll save money. Those who refuse to invest and renew themselves usually ends up on history's scrap yard.

Re:And this is where it begins.

[amber_of_luxor]

>And if the cost for these robots go down enough in the next 5 to 10 years, he could be out of a job

For the typical warehouse operation, either the cost of converting from human labor to bots will have to drop to a third of the current prices, or the cost of labor will have to rise about 30%, before it becomes cost-effective to retrofit the operation to mainly/exclusively bots.

Any rational company, building a warehouse today, is going to design it for bots doing all of the grunt work. The only on-site humans will be the warehouse manager, and the person who takes care of the bots.

The warehouse of the future will keep everything in the container it was shipped to the warehouse in, until the item has to be shipped to the customer. The containers will be stacked two or three high, with an overhead crane moving the containers between their destination in the warehouse, and the barge/truck/rail car/plane that they came on.

Wonderful

[terrywirth5]

Offshore this.