
How Amazon Triggered a Robot Arms Race - petethomas
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-29/how-amazon-triggered-a-robot-arms-race
======
kristofferR
Komplett.no, which aims to become the Amazon of Norway (the real Amazon
doesn't care about Norway), has a really cool automated warehouse (AutoStore)
which seems even more advanced than Amazons:

[http://autostoresystem.com/](http://autostoresystem.com/)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_O0UKARdLDc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_O0UKARdLDc)
(360° video)

[http://www.tu.no/artikler/unik-video-bli-med-inn-i-
kompletts...](http://www.tu.no/artikler/unik-video-bli-med-inn-i-kompletts-
splitter-nye-robotlager/223905)

The packages still need to be packaged by hand though, but it seems like it
would be easier to automate that for the AutoStore system since each product
has its own box as opposed to Amazons Kiva system where multiple products are
placed on the same shelf.

~~~
sschueller
I find autostore to be a much cleaner solution than the adhoc system amazon
uses. With the amazon system you need a lot more space and staff to fill those
shelves. In addition you have to be careful not to load them top heavy.

~~~
karambahh
The only downside I see with Autstore is building maintenance.

What about maintenance on a column? You have to stop the whole system, unload
& disassemble part of the grid just to run a new cable or check for humidity
or whatever on your structural columns.

That's the only downside I see. It's a very simple concept solving a very real
issue and their motto "stop airhousing start warehousing" real hits home!

~~~
Shivetya
looking at autostore I was curious how many skus can be done efficiently and
how deep you can go relative to the number of fast moving lines? With a
million SKUs it might be fun to see what initial mapping can be done. Also,
how can hazardous stacks be integrated to they can deliver to the same work
station as regular items?

as for maintenance I would think a few strategic extra rows could serve that
purpose without losing too much efficiency.

most the picking I am used to has both voice and light based picking with high
velocity parts duplicated to the front.

~~~
yuegui
It will depend on the size of the grid, number of positions on one level and
number of robots. For fast movers, autostore can prepare those products and
bring them to a few of the top levels when users are not actively picking or
doing putaway. When the picking starts, those robots can get accessed to fast
movers more quickly.

For maintenance, there is an extra area outside the grid where you can move
the robot out of the grid to do some maintenance work on it without affecting
the rest of the system.

------
Animats
I'd wondered how Kiva's old customers were doing. Now we know. There really
isn't a direct replacement for Kiva robots from another vendor.

The great thing about Kiva robots is that they're quite simple and robust
mechanically. They're a battery, motors, wheels, and a lift mechanism. They're
completely interchangeable, and having one fail isn't a big deal. Maintenance
is replacing batteries, motors, wheels, and maybe the electronics module as
necessary. The infrastructure they require is modest. The competing systems
all seem to require more elaborate robots, special totes, and special shelf
construction.

Amazon says that Kiva robots cut their order picking time from 90 minutes to
15. Other retailers, seeing that number, must be terrified. It's a
technological improvement like that which makes same-day delivery from a large
inventory possible.

~~~
kuschku
And this is horrible for the market.

A company gaining a huge advantage by getting a total monopoly over another
market, which they can enforce due to having patents.

That’s not what patents were supposed to create, and what Antitrust
regulations were supposed to prevent.

If this is the future, it’s quite a dystopia: Monopolies everywhere.

Sure, I get that the Silicon Valley business model is to destroy regulation,
get a monopoly (ideally in a new market niche, but destroying existing
competition with illegal predatory pricing is also common), and then to abuse
the monopoly, but is no one thinking that for the average consumer a free,
competitive market might be better?

~~~
brc
A monopoly is a specific thing, not just an insult to a company you don't
like.

Most monopolies can only be sustained through state intervention, which is why
large government is more of a problem than large companies like Amazon.

This situation is fantastic for the consumer - companies competing to lower
prices and increase service.

As the story says the market has responded quickly and the industry is
growing, precisely how things are supposed to work.

~~~
lhopki01
Monopoly is the natural end state of capitalism. Once a company is big enough
it's easy to destroy or buy out all competition. It's only regulation that
prevents all industries becoming monopolies over time.

You're confusing monopolies coopting government to maintain control with large
government causing and maintaining monopolies.

~~~
brc
Sorry, but no. Creative destruction is the end state of capitalism as has been
proven time and time again. There are no examples of monopolies lasting more
than a few years unless they have overt support from the state.

Large governments cause monopolies to happen. You said the same thing.
Business co-opting a government to creat a monopoly is only possible when the
large government exists. You could argue that water and dirt don't cause trees
to grow, but without either there is no tree. The language definition is
immaterial.

Increases in government size can only occur by taking over parts of the
economy into state monopolies. The ultimate large government is a totalitarian
communist government, which has a monopoly on everything.

The ultimate cure for monopoly behaviour is a smaller government and more
competition by avoiding regulations that favour larger operations over smaller
ones.

~~~
ximeng
Standard oil? Microsoft? At a high level government and big business are very
similar in scope. It's not a matter of one or the other - your analysis is too
simple. Government created the baby bells, not creative destruction.
Government circumscribed ms.

~~~
icebraining
Standard Oil was never a monopoly, and even its 90% market share had already
dropped to 70% two years later when the government even filed charged, and
even more when the case was decided.

Microsoft's market position is inseparable from its support by government in
the form of software patents. When their rent on Android phones is larger than
their income from their own phones, and that rent is purely based on having a
patent on an obsolete filesystem which is only useful because it was
previously "the standard" (ie., imposed by them), the government is directly
helping Microsoft take advantage from their dominant market position in other
markets - exactly what they purpose to ban.

~~~
nl
Microsoft was monopolistic in the 1990's, where they exploited their Windows
monopoly to the expense of Netscape. That wasn't patents, it was market
dominance.

(Not a fan of patents, but that wasn't the problem back then).

~~~
icebraining
The claim I was supporting was "there are no examples of monopolies _lasting
more than a few years_ unless they have overt support from the state", not
that no company ever gains an overwhelming market share. Yes, IE was once at
the very top. And a few years later, it wasn't, thanks to competition.

Meanwhile, the government lawsuit not only did nothing to curb their position
(IE kept rising at the same rate), as it gave Microsoft "a special antitrust
immunity to license Windows and other 'platform software' under contractual
terms that destroy freedom of competition."[1]

[1]
[http://www.unclaw.com/chin/scholarship/nando.pdf](http://www.unclaw.com/chin/scholarship/nando.pdf)

------
sgwealti
This article really overhypes the Kiva robots. I work in the warehouse
automation industry for a fortune-500 retailer with several large e-commerce
brands. Robotic goods-to-person is only one of many applications of robotics
and automation in warehouses. It is also really only useful for certain types
of long-tail operations - many SKUs, low volume per SKU. It also still very
labor intensive because someone still has to pack all of those orders.

I think the Kiva robots are an important part of Amazon's fulfillment
efficiency but I don't see a huge market for that technology across the
warehousing industry because there are a lot of other problems that it doesn't
solve at all or doesn't handle very well.

From my point of view the automated storage and retrieval and shuttle systems
are much more interesting and more widely applicable. They are also a much
more efficient use of vertical space.

~~~
endersshadow
One of the nice things about the Kiva robots is that they will actually
organize the warehouse based on popularity of the SKUs automagically. Things
that are low volume get placed farther away from the pickers, and things that
are high volume are never far away from the pickers.

~~~
sgwealti
I agree that is an advantage of the goods-to-person robots but shuttle systems
do the same thing and are a better use of vertical space.

~~~
endersshadow
What's an example of them? I'm interested to learn.

~~~
sgwealti
There are 5 or 6 vendors that have offerings in that space. Some of them are:
Opex Perfect Pick, Dematic Mulishuttle 2, Intelligrated OLS Shuttle, Witron's
OFS, SSI Schafer's Navette. These solutions are definitely more capital
intensive than Kiva robots but they are faster and have a much smaller
footprint.

If you have a Kiva-type goods to person robot system and your order profile
changes like more lines per order or more order lines of a particular SKU, the
system can run into scaling issues. There are only so many robots and so much
floor space to navigate in. Shuttles to some extent have the same problem but
because of their smaller footprint you run out of horizontal space slower than
you do with Kiva robots.

~~~
bedhead
Isn't the issue that a Kiva system is more scalable since it allows for rapid
handling of far more SKUs? A key part of Amazon's retail strategy is that it's
the first place you go to look for something because you know they have
seemingly product on earth...they're the default e-commerce site for many. My
understanding was that these shuttle-type systems simply don't allow for that.
Maybe I'm wrong...if so what are the other trade-offs? Thanks

~~~
sgwealti
With either system you can scale in the following ways: -Add more shelving
units to store more SKUs or to store more of faster moving SKUs. -Add more
robots to process more order lines simultaneously. -Add more pack
stations/labor

Adding more shelving units is limited by floor space. The equivalent scaling
for shuttles is adding more aisles. Adding more aisles scales farther than
adding more shelving units because it uses the entire vertical height of the
building. Even taking mezzanines into account aisles are going to scale
farther.

Adding more robots or shuttles will scale until the travel paths are
congested. Whichever technology moves faster is going to scale better here. I
don't know enough about the speed of the Kiva robots vs shuttles to say who is
better here but I suspect shuttles can move faster.

Adding more pack stations is something either type of system can do and I
can't see any advantage either system has over the other there. Kiva is
probably more flexible here because you don't need expensive conveyor
reconfiguration/addition if you want to add more pack stations. Shuttles, with
the proper supporting conveyor can probably get higher throughput.

I think where Kiva really shines is in its flexibility. It can store a lot of
different types of items and it is flexible in its ability to move stuff
around. It is definitely not the most labor efficient goods-to-person
automation technology and it is also not a great use of space. It runs into
problems if you need to scale up in SKUs per order or overall order lines per
day because you don't have enough travel space available to get all that stuff
to the pack stations. Based on my ordering habits and what I have seen of
friends Amazon is dealing with a very low number of SKUs per order so it works
for them.

------
ChuckMcM
I was reminded of how Dell originally pioneered extreme operational efficiency
as the tool which made them hard to beat. I also particularly like the
warehouse robotics application, it is a good mix of being able to make some
adaptations in the environment to mitigate some of the more serious robotics
challenges and yet able to effectively evaluate the net value to the business
with and without.

Just wish I'd started a warehouse robot company 4 years ago :-)

~~~
iandanforth
Not too late to join one! We (Fetch Robotics) are hiring for many roles!

~~~
desdiv
FYI the link on your profile,
[http://fetchrobotics.com/?page_id=30](http://fetchrobotics.com/?page_id=30),
is bouncing to an outdated page: [http://fetchrobotics.com/careers-
old](http://fetchrobotics.com/careers-old).

~~~
iandanforth
Fixed. Thanks!

------
peterkshultz
Amazon's acquisition of Kiva is one of the best examples of vertical
integration in the e-commerce industry.

The article reminded me of acquisitions in the Gilded Age. Perhaps one could
compare Bezos to Rockefeller, presuming Bezos was the one who pushed for such
purchases.

~~~
prawn
For anyone yet to read the article who is initially confused (as I was),
besides the Kiva you might know from microlending, there's also a Kiva who
make industrial robots for warehouses. As per the article, Amazon bought the
latter Kiva and forced competitors to turn to alternatives that were yet to be
developed.

~~~
NetTechM
Thanks for that, I was initially "lost in the sauce" as it were.

------
deegles
Personally, I think it's a net benefit that the picking jobs are on their way
out. I don't believe most people do it for fun!

On the other hand, there's going to be short term turmoil as people scramble
to find new jobs in an increasingly automated world.

~~~
peterkshultz
I'd imagine that people who need such picking jobs would rather have them
around than not.

~~~
ethbro
Isn't that the point of UBI? Getting us past the local maxima of "this job is
soul-crushing and a waste of a person's intelligence, but economics make it
cheaper to use a body than a robot"?

~~~
tuna-piano
I know many college graduates in their mid/late twenties doing various
"knowledge" jobs. Many of them consider their jobs soul crushing.

Most people don't like their work. Most people don't like waking up on someone
else's schedule and do work that their told to do. That's why businesses pay
them, after all.

~~~
sgift
And I always thought businesses pay you because you do something which they
value, and that this is sometimes soul crushing is just a coincidence.

~~~
penguinduck
The more a person wants to do a job, the less compensation they will demand
because the emotional satisfaction they get substitutes for a part (or
sometimes all) of the compensation. When there are a lot of people who have a
strong preference for doing a job in a particular industry, they collectively
drive down the price of their own labor into the ground.

Companies will only pay what they have to.

Some examples of industries where tons of people work for shit money (less
than a person of their abilities could earn in other industries) or even
sometimes for free because of an emotional attachment to that industry are
showbusiness, art and academia.

Then you have the opposite examples, like working on an oil platform - most of
those people would earn less money if they had picked a different industry,
because they have to be paid more to agree to live on an oil platform and do a
shitty and dangerous job.

------
jpeg_hero
I thought Amazon was pulling back on Kiva.

I thought I read somewhere that new warehouses were not using the Kiva
systems.

~~~
codeonfire
They can't be used for large item warehouses and are probably not worth it for
smaller warehouses. Also existing warehouses that are multilevel with plywood
flooring probably can't be retrofitted easily. Since their focus seems to be
on same day, one hour delivery from small urban warehouses, the majority of
their new warehouses are probably not going to use kiva.

~~~
huherto
Why are they not worht for smaller warehouses ? The cost of kiva robots for
amazone are per unit. Thus proportional to the size of the warehouse.

~~~
codeonfire
Cost of installing the system, cost of maintenance for a smaller number of
bots, less dense shelving, more specialized training, lower picking costs
because of smaller area. Prime now also delivers refrigerated food which
probably Kiva can't do.

Probably smaller warehouses are not purpose built for Kiva so maybe they don't
have power, floor space, or layout to make kiva work well. This one in
Manhattan is only 40k feet and has low ceilings:
[http://time.com/4159144/amazon-prime-warehouse-new-york-
city...](http://time.com/4159144/amazon-prime-warehouse-new-york-city-
deliveries-christmas/)

------
mooreds
Super exciting, because of the efficiencies, but I hear echoes of manna:
[http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm](http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm)

------
Aelinsaar
Interesting. I wonder if this system and that "Hover" technology would be a
good fit? A warehouse seems like one of the good places to line the floor with
metal and clear the people out.

~~~
taneq
You mean the electromagnetic 'hoverboard' thing? This is probably the best bet
for that tech to become relevant, but it's hard to see how it'd be more
efficient than just using air cushions, which are an established way of moving
heavy things around on smooth floors (let alone wheels).

~~~
Aelinsaar
That's what I was thinking of, and to be honest, don't know much about it.
Maybe there's a potential maintenance advantage, given fewer moving parts?

------
huherto
The innovation is great. But it is scary that amazon may start buying all
these robot startups just to keep the patents and their products out of the
hand of other e-commerce companies.

------
reachtarunhere
GreyOrange ([http://www.greyorange.com](http://www.greyorange.com)) is a well
funded startup solving the exact problem.

------
SlipperySlope
Trump is right to go after Amazon on monopoly and antitrust.

