Is this cool or frightening?

[Live and Learn]

I find it a bit of both. Definitely fascinating.

Amazon’s Warehouse Robots, at Work and Play


Rob WalkerTech Columnist
November 20, 2014

It’s hard to say whether Amazon will ever really deploy squadrons of drones to deliver customer purchases. But, according to The Wall Street Journal, its order-fulfillment plans for the fast-approaching holiday season will involve around 10,000 robots.

These robots, designed to fit into a more efficient fulfillment-center logistics scheme, are made by Kiva Systems, a company that Amazon purchased in 2012.

Hugging the floor like a Roomba, and about the size of a big suitcase, these bright-orange bots lift and carry shelf-stacks of merchandise to warehouse workers who pack items for shipping. The idea is that it’s easier for the humans to stay in one place rather than tromp around a cavernous facility.

Curious to see this in action, I found this helpful video made by Wired a little while back:

News link: https://www.yahoo.com/tech/amazons-warehouse-robots-at-work-and-play-103129789109.html

[ManiacJoe]

1. Interesting. Bring the stack of shelves to the human packer

instead of sending the packer into the array of shelves.

[JustAnotherGen]

3. It could be much safer

Than having people around moving pallet lifts.

My company's reverse logistics has strong automation. Even takes pictures of the package coming into the facility. Too often the consumer box gets tossed around by the shipping companies - and nine times out of ten those pictures and damage sensors protect our customers claim/complaint about the product.

[newfie11]

2. OMG the number of jobs that are lost must be staggering

This is very cool to watch and I'm sure it's going to be very popular with business. All I could think about is all the lost jobs for humans.

[Live and Learn]

4. That was my initial thought too.

Then I began to see the bots as almost human. We are in for some interesting developments.