
Amazon crowns winner of first warehouse robot challenge - oillio
http://www.engadget.com/2015/06/01/amazon-picking-challenge-winner/
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Animats
That's a nice bin-picking system. Bin-picking is a classic robotic
manipulation problem [1], and they're doing a good job. They target the object
and approach it from an angle where pickup is possible. The unusual thing here
is the range of objects picked. Most bin-picking has a far narrower range.

It's a vacuum picker, which is limited; they couldn't pick up a perforated
metal pencil holder. But over 90% of the items tested were vacuum-pickable.
That's probably a reasonable figure for Amazon's inventory, since books are
vacuum-pickable. Amazon can sort their inventory into machine-pickable and
non-machine pickable.

The new system is really slow, but that can be fixed.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wh2GRA9enN4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wh2GRA9enN4)

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peteretep

        > since books are vacuum-pickable
    

Really? I'd have thought they were one of a class that weren't. If you latch
on to the outer cover, you'll splay the book, which can damage hard backs.

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Raphael
Perhaps all the books are shrink-wrapped to hold them shut.

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ck2
How can self-driving cars handle going down the road at 70mph, yet bin-picker
robots have to move so slowly to be accurate?

Seems like a contradiction to me.

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ChuckMcM
They don't. It is a convergence problem. If you've ever seen a pick-and-place
robot in a factor you know they can be quite fast.

Simply put, the convergence problem is getting to the correct orientation and
position to positively pick up an item. Factory robots finesse that by putting
parts in a narrow area in the work space but modern car assembly robots can
pull parts in a wide variety of orientations and positions.

Current research has focused on visual systems as it is pretty cheap these
days to put a couple of cameras near the end effector to provide a
stereoscopic view to the effector converging on the target.

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nulltype
Here's a pretty sweet pick and place robot for reference:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzHpDDttIBU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzHpDDttIBU)

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dankohn1
That reminds me of the famous Lucille Ball chocolate scene [0], except in this
case the robot is keeping up just fine!

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NPzLBSBzPI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NPzLBSBzPI)

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thedogeye
Congrats to Team RBO!

And whatever is the antonym of congrats to Amazon's warehouse workers!

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raverbashing
Based on stories about those positions, even though they'll lose their job,
hopefully they'll have a better position.

Amazon warehouse positions have high attrition and turnaround

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MCRed
It's not just warehouse, it's engineering. Amazon as a company treats
employees (outside of the executive suite) like dirt. IT's a retailer, more
like Walmart than Microsoft, and so they have no respect for engineering. The
only reason AWS happened was Vogels had enough power to isolate his people
from the rest of Amazon (though I bet that team is suffering now too.)

My boss was trained to be a prison guard and couldn't operate spreadsheets,
after a re-org, his boss was, I kid you not, one of those DMV ladies who has
no interest in doing anything but covering her butt. (I mean, literally worked
at the DMV and then got a job at Amazon managing dozens of engineers.)

They like to say things like "only hire A players" but their entire management
is D players. It's hard to get a job as an engineer there but as an
engineering manager all you need is a college degree in basket weaving and a
demonstrated ability to kiss ass.

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marincounty
I do agree Amazon is just another retailer in the end. As to being a cutting
edge technology company, I don't put Amazon in the same league as any of
Musk's companies, but what do I know? I know I'm tired of UPS trucks
delivering one package. I don't feel shopping on Amazon is good for the
environment. Maybe one day--when the drones deliver all the stuff we really
don't need? Sorry, I don't like these huge stores. In Amazons defense, they do
allow little guys to sell through their store. Is Amazon as evil as Wallmart--
no!

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joars
Cool, it would probably be less complex if the items were at one place all the
time, like with a robotic warehouse:
[https://youtu.be/6EmR0KHBj_M?t=1m](https://youtu.be/6EmR0KHBj_M?t=1m)

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peteretep
I have built an automated warehouse very similar to the one in the video; you
get different items in the same totes - any other approach is simply not
feasible from a space perspective.

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sogen
say no to spec work

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matthewrhoden1
I wonder if it would be better to have a smart bin that would simply push
products down a slide to a conveyor belt instead.

~~~
harmarsupercar
Yes, it does seem like they're using a robot to solve a human problem. If the
robots were the ones who decided how the shelves were initially stacked then
surely there would be more elegant approaches to this? picking and packing is
a tiny part of the whole ordering and delivery system which would probably be
best re-designed from the top down if all parts are to be conducted
automatically.

That said, I'm all for businesses encouraging research to be done in this
area. Automation will swallow us all eventually, but it's going to take a
while yet...

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saosebastiao
There's nothing like giving away something for tens of thousands of dollars
that they could have sold for tens of billions.

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melling
Can you skip the snarky comment and explain why this kind of contest is bad?
To me it seems like a great idea for everyone. The contestants:

1\. Can win money

2\. Gain exposure

3\. Network with other contestants

4\. Potentially get more funding

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saosebastiao
If you could teleport packages to my front porch, would you be willing to give
that to Amazon in exchange for $25k and "exposure"? Amazon becomes the first
trillion dollar company in history and you get your name on a press release
and some snack money. I would never want any sort of exposure that told people
that I'm easily duped about the value of my brain.

~~~
robotresearcher
The problem is very very far from solved. Amazon is supporting students to
work on problems Amazon cares about, and these events are very important for
Amazon to recruit engineers. Some of these young people will go work for
Amazon and some of them will start companies that Amazon will buy. I don't
think they are being duped.

Amazon's robotics group is the Kiva Systems startup they bought for a huge
amount of money a few years ago.

I was at the conference and dropped in to this event. Lots of energy and
committed teams. Many/most teams did pretty badly. I heard (but couldn't
confirm) that only one item was correctly picked on the first day. It's not
easy.

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phlyingpenguin
Do they fund the research groups?

Having been a grad student (EDIT: Hey, it turns out my research group has
published at ICRA! But not while this has gone on.), I get why these events
are interesting/important. However it seems like AMZ could do a little more
than <1/8th of an engineer in prize money (not counting the cost of running
the conference).

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robotresearcher
I believe they did not directly fund these group's research. Just the
challenge.

Amazon does in-house R&D and is precious about the IP, like most companies.
Academic research needs to have flexible IP deals.

Most of the Amazon funding for this event went to supporting student travel
and registrations, plus gear shipping. Details are probably confidential but
think roughly an order of magnitude more than the cash prize. Shipping is
expensive.

Funding challenges is smart. Some groups are doing funded research anyway, on
more-or-less related things like grasping, vision, manipulation, planning,
whatever. The challenge gets teams to focus on a more complete and realistic
task, thus guiding the development of their general tech in Amazon's
direction.

Bottom line: Amazon, the historically conservative low-margin retailer, showed
up at the premier IEEE robotics research conference, brought some money and
hired some grad students. Students worked hard, learned a lot. Amazon and
winners got some good press. Awesome.

It's interesting how the best team was way ahead of everyone else. I'd be very
interested to see what Amazon can do internally.

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marincounty
"Amazon, the historically conservative low-margin retailer"

They are slowly raising prices. It's off topic, but I have noticed their
prices are slowly rising. I saw this happen to Home Depot, and Costco. I'm not
knocking Amazon, I just got too comfortable clicking away, and should have
been looking around for the best price.

