

KIVA Robots Continue to Conquer Warehouses - kkleiner
http://singularityhub.com/2009/05/08/kiva-robots-continue-to-conquer-warehouses/

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huhtenberg
Note how the robots are lined up and waiting most of the time, meaning that
the bottleneck is in human workers. I'm guessing it's not long till they are
completely eliminated from the order assembly.

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ivankirigin
Your guess would be wrong. Dynamically perceiving, picking and placing
irregular objects is really hard and completely unsolved. Obstacle avoidance
via sonar & lasers and reliable bar code reading have been solved for a
decade.

They didn't create an advanced robot. They created an advanced system that
works really well in whole.

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huhtenberg
> They didn't create an advanced robot. They created an advanced system that
> works really well in whole.

Of course, I understand that.

But if you watch the video again, you may notice that a vast majority of items
being shipped are .. boxes, not irregular shapes. Determining if the order
consists entirely out of box shapes is straight-forward. And since the
packaging needs not be optimal in terms of space, just not overly wasteful, so
there is a lot of potential for further automation.

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mistermann
True....and cardboard boxes often come with the flaps connected when they are
folded...I see no reason why a robot couldn't unfold the appropriate size box
for an order, leave the top flaps open (but still connected, giving at least
50% more volume than a sealed box), then a sophisticated warehouse like amazon
has could likely easily treadmill individual the items into the box (in proper
order according to item size, etc), scanning them as they go in to ensure
success, then the fine tuning of packing could be done by a human. Some orders
might not qualify for this level of automation, but thats pretty easy to
figure out.

I would imagine Amazon might already be doing this, anyone ever seen a video??

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jamie
"Founder and CEO Mick Mountz experienced the challenges of existing material
handling systems firsthand while working at online grocer Webvan."

I wonder how many other dotcom flameouts went on to rethink the expansiveness
of their plans, and started solving individual problems that caused their
failure. Clearly, webvan in 2009 would stand a better chance than webvan 1999.

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jerf
Article: "itch Rosenberg, VP of Marketing at KIVA, says that human workers are
giving name tags and other identifying marks to their favorite robots. At some
companies, “the robots” send you a birthday card each year. We have a hard
time, it seems, avoiding anthropomorphizing and adopting robots as pets. And
that’s okay. They may not be cute, but blue-collar bots are a working man’s
best friend."

Well, if it's a choice between anthropomorphizing and demonizing, and given
human psychology it probably is _precisely_ that choice, anthropomorphizing is
the radically better choice. Cultures that demonize robotics will shortly find
that supremely maladaptive.

I've sort of worried about the demonizing undercurrent of American culture,
but perhaps it will be shown merely a Hollywood-induced fad once the rubber
hits the road and we all continue to deal with ever-more robots.

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jlefo7p6
The photo of the wide corridor of KIVA's bustling past each other struck me as
beautiful. Maybe I should get some sleep ;)

Like the Roomba, these guys found a way to use tech that we already have to do
something magical.

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kkleiner
Marshall has a lot more wrong than the year. I think his ideas are pretty
ludicrous. He thinks that in the next decade or so robots will replace humans
as construction workers. Does he have any idea how hard of a challenge that
is? More likely is that robots will complement humans in construction, just as
they are in warehousing, long before they completely replace humans.

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ph0rque
Reminds me of the scifi story _Manna_ , by Marshall Brain:
<http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm>

Looks like he was off by a year on the robotic revolution, and he got the
wrong industry where it starts.

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ivankirigin
Manna is fun, but junk. What about wealth creation from robotics implies
society would be enslaved? It makes no sense at any scale.

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jimbokun
How do you keep several billion people gainfully employed, with robots able to
do so many tasks without supervision?

It means we will need to change our economic systems to adapt to that reality.
Otherwise, Manna might be the result.

So, as sci-fi that makes you think, I find it useful.

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blhack
THE PLOW IS GOING TO MAKE THE FARMER OBSOLETE!!!

Okay, I'm kidding, of course, and I struggle with this all the time. I mean,
if a factor that used to require 1000 people to build cars now only requires
100, or 50, or 1 or 0 or _whatever_ , then what happened to the rest of the
workers?

They have moved on to auxiliary industries such as engineering (somebody needs
to design the robots right).

The endgame, however, will be the mechanized production of everything. At that
point, energy will be the currency (instead of labor..think about it, paper
money is just a unit of time*energy). If we can tap the near-limitless
supplies of energy from fusion, we will have achieved a nearly Utopian
Society.

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ibsulon
1\. What stops the engineers from becoming obsolete? We're just further down
the line.

2\. Only a relatively small percentage of the population has the skills for
creative scientific and technical work such as programming and engineering.
(Let's say 20%.) Once robots can do all of the work of individuals 90IQ and
below, what do you do with these people?

<http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/5/8/02946/35811> has an example of a
channenged man being fired from McDonalds.

"God, I'm so fucking angry. My brother doesn't care about the pay. He just
wants the chance to be out there with people - to feel the same sort of
satisfaction that all of us working stiffs experience from knowing we've
contributed, however marginally, to the human machine. The kind of
satisfaction that only a job can provide.

He's upstairs crying right now."

(Note: I am not suggesting that anyone is owed a job, here, but rather that
there is a dignity involved with being able to contribute to society in some
fashion, and that we could see instability with a lack of outlets for
individuals.)

We already see the problems in Detroit with the lack of jobs and ability to
get out. While some of these people could be retrained into other fields, many
cannot. We have to figure out how to keep them integrated into society, or
present an alternative path.

3\. Perhaps we see the example from Elf Sternberg's utopia world -- he
presumed that in societies with no need for human production that people would
create what they enjoyed and that the system would move to a gift culture.
Perhaps. Even with power, however, we're still looking at some way to ration
resources...

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hellweaver666
Regarding your first point... Only a stupid engineer would design a robot that
could do his job for him. Robots designing robots? Where have I heard that
before? Oh yeah... Terminator!

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muunkky
This opens up a whole world of resource allocation algorithms. Usually the
logistical mathematics is limited by human-based constraints. It might be
worthwhile to throw the book out on bin-packing and random access methods and
try some new, fun linear algorithms from scratch!

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tjic
I did some contracting work at iRobot a few years back, and know a few people
who are now at KIVA.

Smart cookies - they deserve the success!

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mkull
Does the Kiva system work with garments (hanging merchandise)?

