| But I don't see the business case. Take the furniture - Ikea can assemble their flat pack furniture for me ... in front of the store. That's exactly where I don't want it assembled. In fact we are back to the value of the robot being in the home not the factory. On suoermarkets, yes Walmart and Tesco made a sensible decision to use their existing stores as feeders for delivery. But as the number of people taking food deliveries goes up, that starts being a commercial disadvantage - there are things you can do to improve a warehouse that you can't do if customers are walking around in it, there are car parks that aren't needed now, smaller stores in expensive locations. It's not like Walmart's going bust next week but the world is changing. Even Amazon will feel this - a fleet of international transit and drivers designed to drop one package off randomly is going to find that model under threat if I get a food delivery every three days - 99% of the time I will just have the other stuff i order come in the same box. For every house, it makes sense that only one delivery company visits that house. If they are delivering every couple of days anyway just roll it in together. Place tour order and it will be with your regular Tuesday drop off - that's convenient mentally for most people, whereas "expect a knock on the door anytime in the next 36 hours" is less easy to manage - especially now we are not all locked indoors. I think i have wondered off the point but it's always much simpler to change the process than to build a human-analogue robot. We all have huge shifts in how we will live in the coming decades - to stave off climate change, to take advantage of what software can really offer. Making already efficient factories more efficient is the equivalent of looking for your keys under the lamppost- the big wins lie elsewhere. Edit - the big five future changes - urban planning (see Tokyo, or StrongTowns)
- Buikding energy efficiency (solar panels, heat exchangers)
- Transoortation (Food and people) & transportation (other)
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