
A Day in the Life of a Kiva Robot (2011) [video] - ZeljkoS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KRjuuEVEZs
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leke
Ok, so I'm thinking the need for this could become huge. How does one get into
this industry as a programmer? What would I need to learn? What kind of
diplomas are useful? What should I start practising on?

~~~
monocasa
As someone who's been trying to hire for a robotics programmer for a long
time:

Need to have:

Systems/RTOS experience. ie. not spend a week chasing your tail when you
stupidly put a printf in an ISR which changes timing so the code works, but
then when you pull out the printf it stops working.

Be able to read schematics and datasheets. I'm not expecting you to design a
board (we have EEs for that), but you should absolutely be able to be given a
schematic and a datasheet and then write a driver for a simple peripheral.

Basic understanding of control theory. Being able to articulate what a PID
loop is and why open control loops are a bad idea is probably good enough.

Being a self directed learner. Robotics tends to be fairly low volumes all
things considered (or atleast my branch of it). We have issues with vendor
support not really caring about what happens to us since our volumes are so
low. We therefore have to own significantly more of our tooling and have to be
able to peer in to what our vendors would prefer to be treated as black boxes
quite a bit. Any RE experience would go a really long way here in my book.

Nice to have:

Good understanding of mechanical engineering/physics terms like stiction.
Ostensibly if you have the skillsets written above this you can be taught
this, but this lowers the bar for hiring you quite a bit.

~~~
angersock
Would you mind shooting me an email? I know some folks that are looking for
work, and at the very least I'd be interested to hear more about what your
business looks like.

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jsilence
Interresting that energy wise it is feasible to transport a whole lot of items
that are not being used to the picker and back. But I am pretty sure that this
has been taken into account when designing the size of the storage pods.
Pretty impressive!

~~~
discodave
It's more obvious when you consider that the alternative is people walking
around the FC filling carts with items.

I imagine that the cost of energy is minimal compared to the cost of labour in
this case. But even if it wasn't, you still have 60-100kg people walking all
over the FC so the difference in energy usage is minimal... but Amazon doesn't
(directly) pay for the calories that their employees burn walking around the
FC.

However one could imagine a Kiva v2 that figured out some way to not move
whole racks at a time. The only reason they move the whole rack is to avoid
having to build a robot that can pick individual items off of the shelf
individually.

~~~
anon4
People walking around might be happier than people who have to stand in one
place all day, though. It would be interesting to invert the system and build
a navigation system for the workers to guide them down the aisles in the most
optimal way to pick up the items - it should take the same amount of time, but
leave you with workers in better physical condition.

~~~
Animats
That's what Amazon had before Kiva robots. Here's the job description:

 _" We go around with a little cart to a conveyor belt and grab 2 plastic
tubs. With a scanner in one hand and pushing the cart in the other your job is
to go around to wherever the scanner tells you and "pick the items" This
involves scanning the tub, then the location bar code, searching for the right
item (which most of the time is easy to find but sometimes hard) and scanning
it. Then doing the same thing for the next 10hours of your day minus the 2
15minute breaks and the 30min lunch break."_

The people are just peripheral devices of the computer systems that run the
distribution center.

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Animats
Here's a more useful video of Kiva robots:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UxZDJ1HiPE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UxZDJ1HiPE)

This one shows the picking station, where the humans take things out of bins
and put them in other bins. A computer-controlled laser pointer points to the
item to be taken out, and a light shows where the item goes, and a bar code
scanner checks on the human. The job takes about two minutes to learn, and
full productivity for new humans is achieved in about half an hour. There is
no possibility of promotion. Machines should think. People should work.

Kiva is a huge success. Before Amazon bought them, they had about 20% of
online order fulfillment in the US. It's higher now, with Amazon using them.
Kiva is so successful because it's so simple to install. All it needs is a big
flat floor with some bar code stickers, a supply of cheap shelving units, and
the robots. All the robots are small and interchangeable, so they don't have
to be repaired on-site and there's no need for expensive on-site technicians
and repair shops. So converting to Kiva robots is fast, cheap, and easy.

Automated warehousing isn't new, but it used to be a lot more complicated and
far more custom. The older systems involved conveyors, machines that moved on
tracks, extensive site-specific and product-specific engineering, and good
onsite maintenance. Here's a state of the art version of a classic automated
storage and retrieval system in a frozen foods warehouse. (The frozen foods
industry has been heavily into warehouse automation for decades, because they
work in a sub-freezing environment.) This is impressive, but look at the sheer
complexity and number of moving parts involved. All those belts, motors,
lifts, and sensors, and all dedicated - if any of that stuff breaks, it has to
be fixed, not just bypassed. With Kiva, any dead robots can be pushed out of
the way and dealt with later, off-site.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuvrP1QKsdk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuvrP1QKsdk)

Here's a direct competitor to Kiva. This approach, with tiny robot cranes, is
less successful.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-G70CivfLM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-G70CivfLM)

Another competitor. This one uses an overhead robotic crane.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Peef_5W9nOQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Peef_5W9nOQ)

Compare the mechanical simplicity of the Kiva system.

Kiva was started by one of the executives of Webvan. (Remember Webvan - first
dot-com boom?) Webvan offered same-day delivery a decade ago. It was popular.
It just cost too much to provide that service. If they could only get rid of
all those warehouse employees and complex warehouse machinery... Well, they
did. Most of them.

But humans are still needed to take things out of one bin and put them into
another. For that, there's the Amazon Bin-Picking Challenge:

[http://amazonpickingchallenge.org/](http://amazonpickingchallenge.org/)

Win up to $26,000 and eliminate 30,000 jobs at Amazon. Entries for the first
round closed in October.

~~~
rgbrenner
_Before Amazon bought them, they had about 20% of online order fulfillment in
the US. It 's higher now, with Amazon using them._

I don't think that's right. They only had about $100m in revenue when Amazon
acquired them.

Also, it's not a given that their market share has increased since Amazon
acquired them. Amazon stopped Kiva's marketing and dedicated all of Kiva's
manufacturing to themselves for years. Even today, Kiva produces robots for
Amazon.

All non-Amazon customers are simply being maintained. Kiva hasn't signed up a
new customer since Amazon acquired them.

 _Here 's a direct competitor to Kiva. This approach, with tiny robot cranes,
is less successful. ... Another competitor. This one uses an overhead robotic
crane. _

That's a single company called Swisslog and they have quite a few products in
this space: [http://www.swisslog.com/](http://www.swisslog.com/)

They also have a product that's nearly identical to Kiva:

[http://www.swisslog.com/Products/WDS/Storage-
Systems/CarryPi...](http://www.swisslog.com/Products/WDS/Storage-
Systems/CarryPick)

~~~
philwelch
Amazon alone probably has a higher market share than all of Kiva's former
customers put together.

~~~
rgbrenner
Probably.

Although Amazon is only using Kiva in 10 of its warehouses. So we're not
really talking about all of amazon.

of course, I don't think that any Kiva's former customers were running all
their warehouses using Kiva either...

IIRC the reason Kiva stopped selling outside of Amazon was because Amazon
literally bought all of the units they were capable of making..

