
Cute Look at the Robots Amazon Just Bought for $775 Million - evo_9
https://allthingsd.com/20120320/cute-look-at-the-robots-amazon-just-bought-for-775-million-video/
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dangson
Why is there even a human picker? In the video it looks like all the picker
does is grab the item from the inventory pod and put it in a box. That seems
like it can definitely be automated.

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mdonahoe
Robots are better at specialized, repeatable tasks. In Kiva's case, they
developed robots that interact with exclusively pods, not the warehouse items
themselves.

Creating a grasping robot that can recognize, lift and efficiently pack the
thousands of different objects in the warehouse is a very hard problem. Robots
would have to be prepared for every possible item, orientation and
configuration while doing the packing. Plus, warehouses get completely new
products all the time, which would require training updates. (Or just strong
AI).

The coordinated movement of square pods in a grid system is super cool and
complicated looking, but it's much easier than all the object recognition and
manipulation tasks we take for granted.

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stevear
After getting chastised not that long ago for not having the best work
conditions for their human pickers... not enough breaks, not enough pay,
unsatisfactory climate conditions...Amazon moves to robots. Problem solved.

