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Amazon's Vulcan Robots Now Stow Items Faster Than Humans

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Re: Amazon's Vulcan Robots Now Stow Items Faster Than Humans

#11

Post by CraigRood »

krapp wrote: post #4
omneity wrote: post #2

Warehouses is definitely not where I expected robots with retractable blades to first appear. The demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWXco05eK28

That's still far slower than a human being, and those bins are far too neat.

Part of my day job is Warehouse Automation - not Amazon!. I would agree with you on being slow, but it probably suffices to what Amazon want to achieve here. If your entire process, so stow, store and retrieve is automated, you wouldn't use these "pods". A lot of these problems seem so simple and easy to automate out, but it's really not!

Re: Amazon's Vulcan Robots Now Stow Items Faster Than Humans

#13

Post by alsodumb »

philipwhiuk wrote: post #9

It's interesting how Amazon is embedding robots in human-designed warehouses whereas Ocado has humans overseeing a robotic warehouse. The later is a much easier problem.

It takes hundreds of millions to build a warehouse. Amazon has tons of them. Retrofitting things is capital intensive.

Re: Amazon's Vulcan Robots Now Stow Items Faster Than Humans

#14

Post by vntok »

wielebny wrote: post #10
krapp wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's still far slower than a human being, and those bins are far too neat.

Slower than a human making one operation. Not slower than human stocking items for a whole day.

Surely the robot does not stop at the end of the day.

Re: Amazon's Vulcan Robots Now Stow Items Faster Than Humans

#16

Post by dlt713705 »

krapp wrote: post #4
omneity wrote: post #2

Warehouses is definitely not where I expected robots with retractable blades to first appear. The demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWXco05eK28

That's still far slower than a human being, and those bins are far too neat.

The challenge is not only stowing objects. It is also optimizing space and keeping it clean. In that matter robots are faster and better.

Re: Amazon's Vulcan Robots Now Stow Items Faster Than Humans

#18

Post by vidarh »

philipwhiuk wrote: post #9

It's interesting how Amazon is embedding robots in human-designed warehouses whereas Ocado has humans overseeing a robotic warehouse. The later is a much easier problem.

The Ocado warehouse automation is pretty crazy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssZ_8cqfBlE

Re: Amazon's Vulcan Robots Now Stow Items Faster Than Humans

#19

Post by WillAdams »

krapp wrote: post #4
omneity wrote: post #2

Warehouses is definitely not where I expected robots with retractable blades to first appear. The demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWXco05eK28

That's still far slower than a human being, and those bins are far too neat.

Yeah, I worked in an Amazon Warehouse on two separate occasions:

https://old.reddit.com/r/EDC/comments/dmnuts/53mamazon_fulfi...

and Inbound (or the previous person picking) was usually a bit less careful.

Re: Amazon's Vulcan Robots Now Stow Items Faster Than Humans

#20

Post by nosrepa »

vntok wrote: post #14
wielebny wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slower than a human making one operation. Not slower than human stocking items for a whole day.

Surely the robot does not stop at the end of the day.

The article says they plan on it operating continuously for 20 hours at a time.
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