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by Twirrim 1797 days ago
Amazon bought Kiva a while back now to do robotics for them, and it's used heavily in their warehouses and facilities around retail side. Anything they can automate through robotics, they try to as robots can work 24x7 (other than maintenance requirements) and over their life span cost less than human workers. They also sponsor engineering competitions around trying to make generalised picking machines. It's good PR for them, and although unlikely any time soon, someone _might_ have an inspired idea and solve something that has vexed experts for a long time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUx-ljgB-5Q shows some footage of the robotics they use.

1 comments

Tom Scott had a good video a couple of weeks ago about a grocery packing warehouse that has a sophisticated picking network:

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

That Ocado factory had a fire recently cause by a robot collision, so the quality doesn't seem quite there yet [0]

[0] https://www.euronews.com/next/2021/07/19/ocado-warehouse-fir...