Berkeley's Two-Armed Robot Hints at a New Future For Warehouses (axios.com)

Pick up a glass of water, lift a fork: you automatically figure out the best way to grasp each object. Now researchers at UC Berkeley have developed a robot that makes similar calculation, choosing on the fly whether to grab an object with pincers or lift it with a suction cup. From a report: Berkeley's two-armed robot, seen in this video clip [GIF file], first considers the contents of a bin and calculates each arm's probability of picking up an object. Its suction cup is good at grabbing smooth, flat objects like boxes, but bad at porous surfaces like on a stuffed animal. The pincers, on the other hand, are best with small, odd-shaped items. The system learned its pick-up prowess not from actual practice, but from millions of simulated grasps on more than 1,600 3D objects. In every simulation, small details were randomized, which taught the robot to deal with real-world uncertainty. The bot can pick up objects 95% of the time, at about 300 successful pickups per hour, its creators write in a paper published this week in Science Robotics. Warehouse robots that can move around merchandise are highly sought after. Amazon is reportedly working on its own "picker" robots, as are several robotics companies.

Comments

Goodbye Warehouse Picker

[Anonymous Coward]

Not right away of course, but in time. Automation will claim another job.

Re:Goodbye Warehouse Picker

[zaq1xsw2cde9]

I agree with your sentiment, however, in this case, these two things are not mutually exclusive. "Farming" is not one thing. "Farming" consists of many processes bringing hundreds of type of products to market, and each of these product have multiple steps in getting it to market.

It is not unreasonable to automate picking of many crops and continuing to add more to this while still requiring manual labor for other more delicate crops.

By the way, plenty of Republican business owners also want the border open to get cheaper labor to improve their profit margins.