I was lucky enough to tour the equivalent facility in Australia. They learned pavement wearing the “hard way” realizing the robots were much more consistent than humans. As such they would actually shift the entire facility a little bit each day (as movement allowed).
One thing we have barely started uncovering are these “2nd order” problems that come with automation.
I first heard about this with plane automatic landing systems, where the planes would always touch down at the same spot on the tarmac. Randomization needed to be added to keep the tarmac from cracking for longer.
yes, I spent some time on google trying to find the article but I guess my googlefoo is failing me today. However I do remember it was the autoland system developed by McDonnell Douglas on the MD-11. They had to add some small randomization to keep if from always touching down on the same part of the pavement all the time.
This is basically pavement wear-leveling. Wonder how much more life they can get from this.
I would also imagine the next generation could include using thinner pavement where they know that the robots would never go through, as this should drastically save on material.
I'd say probably a lot depending on just how much they move the containers around. For an off the cuff calculation considering just the wear from containers we can take the support pads as being 6 inches (larger than real life) there's ~78 pad lengths between it and the far end pad that are untouched in an unmoving stack and if we move it sideways as well there's ~14 so that's just shy of 1100 spots each pad could rest that aren't used under a static container stack. This does ignore the wear from the tires of the movers but it's a quick illustration of all the space underneath the containers that can be wasted.
This planning has hidden costs for other operations though. At my university they where not allowed to move certain equipment whole or even at all through some corridors, as that sort of thinking on the new building had rendered it basically unsafe for usage.
If in doubt over engineer. When handling use cases be in doubt.
That'll be a useful technique for autonomous trucks and roads, because we're going to have the same issue writ large. As long as they don't get too close to other traffic because they're focused on wear leveling.
One thing we have barely started uncovering are these “2nd order” problems that come with automation.