Autonomous Forklift May Eat Up Warehouse Jobs (technologyreview.com)

Jamie Condliffe reports via MIT Technology Review: Seegrid, a provider of material-handling equipment, takes the kinds of forklifts that move 8,000-pound loads around warehouses and makes them autonomous. It does that by popping five stereo cameras on top of the vehicles, having a human drive them around to map a space, and then using image recognition systems similar to those in autonomous cars to navigate the facilities. (Unlike autonomous cars that use sensors like radar and lidar, Seegrid can use just cameras, because lighting conditions in warehouses are more consistent than those on the open road.) But while it's easy enough to have a forklift move objects from one side of a factory to another, reliably loading and unloading them poses a bigger challenge. Other robots designed to haul loads like this tend to pick things up from below, rather than spearing pallets with forks. So autonomous forklifts usually require humans to be present during pickup and dropoff to make sure nothing goes wrong. Seegrid's new GP8 Series 6 forklift has been engineered to reverse its forks into pallets, pick them up, and set them down without a human in the loop.

Comments

Thanks Seegrid!

[FunkSoulBrother]

Another small but vital step in getting a UBI in place in this country. :-)

Re: Thanks Seegrid!

[LordWabbit2]

Agreed, my sister works for a large retailer and she was part of their team to implement automated loading. In their case however a lot of it WAS purely to remove the human element from the equation.

The reason being is that every year during the xmas peak times the forklift drivers would strike and demand higher wages. That forced them to get in part time workers to at least keep stock moving, of course the strikers don't like that so often there is violence and they have to get private security to protect the part time workers (often school kids on summer break - yeah it's summer here over xmas).

Also theft (or "shrinkage" in retailer talk) is bad enough that it was also a contributing factor in removing humans from the loop. Some of the stock still needs humans, but all the dry goods are automated, and they are looking at automating the rest.

Re: This is obvious hogwash

[Maxo-Texas]

Buggy whips were not replaced by electrically powered artificial humans who cost less than $40,000 per year per shift.

Re: This is obvious hogwash

[Maxo-Texas]

No no.. you missed the metaphor...

Humans are not buggy whip makers. They are horses.