
RightHand robotics has automated a new type of warehouse work - prostoalex
https://qz.com/952240/righthand-robotics-has-automated-a-new-type-of-warehouse-work-that-could-help-amazon-amzn/
======
Animats
This is a very big deal. Amazon has been looking for this technology for
years. They've held competitions for it. That video is one of the best
unstructured bin-picking demos ever seen. The combination of a four-fingered
semi-rigid gripper and a suction cup seems to work well. It's fast; many
vision-guided systems are still painfully slow. Amazon should be able to pick
everything in their inventory that weighs less than a kilogram, is reasonably
rigid, and has a surface that can be grabbed with vacuum. Everything
lightweight which comes in a box, can, or jar qualifies. That's probably at
least 75% of the inventory.

This should destroy about 50,000 to 100,000 jobs a year for the next few
years. That's more than the entire coal mining industry.

~~~
monk_e_boy
This type of picker could be used in so many more applications outside of
warehouses. Help disabled shoppers, pick fruit, litter picking, sorting
recycling, etc etc

~~~
dba7dba
It will mean loss of jobs (however low paying and not fulfilling it may be)
for people who can least afford to. People that cannot hope to retrain for a
better job or have some kind of retirement plan in place.

I have mixed feelings about this...

------
dba7dba
I have more of a sense of dread/worry than feeling hopeful for the future. I
don't think this will contribute to improvement of mankind...

I hope I'm proven wrong.

~~~
foxyv
In the short run, (next half a century) this will be a disaster for the least
privileged. In the long run though it will mean liberation from demeaning hard
labor in the same way that tractors and industrialization did the same for our
ancestors.

------
z3t4
Where can you get the parts for building one yourself ? Thinking about
switching from web dev to making robots.

~~~
HcommaZK
Back in my MechE days, I'd buy everything from McMaster-Carr. Probably
overkill for little desktop robots but if you want to build things that are
the size/power of an industrial arm it should have what you need.

------
Isamu
Another robotic warehouse picker to watch is IAM Robotics in Pittsburgh (down
the road from me, as it happens.)

[https://www.iamrobotics.com/](https://www.iamrobotics.com/)

They seem to rely on a stereo vision that perhaps is a CMU spin-off?

