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by bradknowles 878 days ago
Wheelhouse robots? Could you be more specific?

Amazon has been using robots in their fulfillment centers for years now, and there are plenty of public videos out there on those processes. But I don't see how this would replace the use of humans in other critical aspects of fulfillment center operations.

2 comments

Sorry autocorrect. i meant warehouse. Have you seen these? https://youtu.be/ZWonAz7Kczs?si=a0yF-YRRmXYsYj-Q

They are not the robots I assume you’re referring to that move the crates of orders around that roll on the ground.

I had not seen those, no. I had seen the robots shown at https://youtu.be/0MCMB53jlIk?si=QwWegssGG_d6utJL and https://youtu.be/G-WdDeQ4TKw?si=b3IJF2OMcFYKEIRt which I think are likely to be much more useful and practical in a warehouse setting.

IMO, human-style robots are not a good solution for automating a warehouse. They're too limited in terms of how much they can pick up and move, and they're too small. They can't do the highly dexterous operations that currently require real humans, and they can't replace what the big robots can do.

IMO, anyone who is pitching human type robots today is just spinning a bunch of of smoke and mirrors. The real success will come from completely redesigning the whole system around the new robots that will be much more effective and efficient.

Their new robots are dexterous and able to automate much more complex tasks than the existing bots.