
Fully Autonomous Robots: The Warehouse Workers of the Near Future - grellas
http://www.wsj.com/articles/fully-autonomous-robots-the-warehouse-workers-of-the-near-future-1474383024
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Fricken
I was an order picker once in a grocery warehouse, it helped put me through
school. I was also a paperboy, a film projectionist, and a bike messenger. All
automated now or will be soon. Later I became an editorial illustrator, and
when the smartphone hit critical mass I lost 80% of my running gigs over a
couple months, print media collapsed very suddenly: that hurt.

So when Uber drivers complain about self driving cars I just cackle
maniacally.

~~~
johncole
Sort of a tangent but I agree in the character generation from working. I had
it too, and I appreciate having had it. I wonder if this really is part of the
reason for later launches for millenials.

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serg_chernata
This is what fascinates me about discussions on subjects such as basic income.
BI may not be the right answer and it may not even be viable. However, the
writing is on the wall and big changes are coming sooner than we expect.

~~~
rusted_planet
With automated warehouses and autonomous cars and automated fast food and
everything else just think of all the jobs lost. I read articles saying the
jobs will be offset with new jobs, but no one bothers to explain what. Also
when everyone is unemployed how are they going to pay for these automated
goods.

When I was in highschool a job was to build character and get you ready to
survive in the world. Maybe this is why more kids are living with their
parents longer. I don't agree with basic income, because I believe like
welfare people will find ways to exploit it. The people who have a drive to
work will seem like they are getting less.

I am not opposed to this type of automation. It is just worrisome what impacts
it will have that us little guys cannot control..

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thwarted
_I don 't agree with basic income, because I believe like welfare people will
find ways to exploit it._

The whole point of UBI is to avoid means testing, so there's no reason to game
it. Of course, if anything, we won't have actual UBI because it's most likely
politically untenable because of the exact perspective you have, but some form
of extended welfare, which requires some kind of means testing, which is then
gameable.

 _The people who have a drive to work will seem like they are getting less._

If it's truly UBI, then these people can avoid the feeling like they are
getting less by not working, or taking a job closer, or starting their own
company, that doesn't require driving to work. "I don't want to drive to your
office" becomes an acceptable and usable reason to quit your job because you
don't actually _need_ a job under UBI.

~~~
infectoid
Erg... English is most annoy. I'm pretty sure OP meant "drive" as in
motivation, not the car type :)

But yeah, your point it still kind of valid.

Point being, if you are motivated to work then you inevitably get more. If you
simply rely on UBI then you get enough for cheap rent and cheap food.

Pretty sure a UBI doesn't allow for a new xbox games and a carton of
cigarettes every week.

~~~
MawNicker
Plenty of homeless people will waste it on cigarettes. I'm actually for it.
These are precisely those people for which the currently rampant paternalism
is _NOT_ helping. It just further communicates that they are no longer worthy
of bettering themselves. This attitude is pervasive and exists as a direct
reflection of our neo-liberal capitalistic state. It floats around like
pollution in the aether between egos and stifles anyone sensitive to it. Once
that's happened the means-testing merely communicates that they are being
measured and slotted. That anything known of their condition will only be used
to humiliate them further; There is no help. I don't have statistics at hand
but these people (hobos) largely aren't reproducing. Can they not just smoke
and be comfortable? Why are we so desperate to police the abuses of these
systems? Making proper use of them is already it's own reward. Let's just
allow people to punish themselves for as long as they feel they need to.
Without giving them any more evidence that they ought to...

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Animats
Interesting. The video doesn't show the mechanism by which the little mobile
units grab and load a case of something from the racks. That's the classic
hard problem with automated storage and retrieval systems. Most of them use
special pallets or totes. This one doesn't. That's a big win. Everything else
in that video is off the shelf technology.

This is a wholesale warehouse; pallets go in and pallets with different mixes
of boxes go out. It's not a fulfillment center where small customer orders are
picked. Amazon is working on that, but so far they're only semi-automated.
Kiva robots bring the racks to a human picker, who takes an object out of one
bin and puts it in another. Amazon has a competition for robots to do that.

~~~
daveguy
I bet the little robots act as platforms for individual boxes. Little mobile
conveyor belts. When all of the products are relatively large boxes that can
be stacked you don't really have to pick things up. That is the big difference
between individual customer fulfillment. Amazon has to pack a bunch of odd
shaped items. When everything goes comes in and goes out on pallets you know
all the components are pallet friendly. It is a nice niche to be in.

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pcunite
"... There aren’t enough young people coming into the workforce who really
want to work in warehouses."

Interesting comment, passing the blame to people. A better comment would have
been, "we don't want people to do these type of jobs because we're building a
better utopia of the future ..."

~~~
pjc50
Who _does_ want to work in warehouses? Haven't we all seen those reports of
how uncomfortable it, both physically (hot heavy crowded work) and mentally
(agressive metrics and no job security)?

The more uncomfortable the job is the more comfortable I am with automating it
away.

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mc32
Mrs Clinton and/or Mr Trump had better figure something out this time round,
or next time this country is going to have a large group of grumpy blue collar
workers out of a job and a new crop who never got the chance to have one, if
they don't figure out quick how to address these structural changes. It won't
be one made up of largely rustbelt blue collar workers whose jobs got
outsourced overseas or across the border.

This is cutting unskilled and low-skilled labor at the knee. The only bastion
left is one that domestic workers are loath to do and that is harvesting and
meatpacking --but those will likely fall to automation as well.

This time the giant sucking sound wont be coming from south of the border but
rather from the army of robotic workers.

~~~
Animats
Automated lamb deboning system.[1] Starts with an X-ray to find the bones.
Laser scanners build a 3D image. Robot saws and knives cut at the right
places. The system is kind of slow and rather complicated. About two more
generations of development are needed.

Automated fruit picking for delicate fruits is still a research project. There
are lots of slow demo systems with robot arms. 1 apple per second is the state
of the art.

In practice, most fruit is picked using mechanical systems such as a tree-
shaker that makes all the fruit fall off.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=za2dsB0qrMg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=za2dsB0qrMg)
[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBcWZcjXr-I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBcWZcjXr-I)

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dharma1
Everyone thinks it's the blue collar jobs that will be lost to automation, but
I guess a lot of office jobs will be too.

Especially jobs where the data is easily machine readable, processes can be
online, and the work doesn't require human negotiation.

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kozikow
I don't know why you would complain about it.

1\. Automate all low skilled jobs.

2\. Create technocratic city-states. Maybe seasteading, maybe something else.

3\. Robots won't be able to vote on things like Trump or Brexit.

