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

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?

[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.

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

[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: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.

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.