5 ms·

When I was a graduate student, the lab next door was working on robotic arms and picking challenges, their PhD grad was then hired by... Amazon. I don't think

When I was a graduate student, the lab next door was working on robotic arms and picking challenges, their PhD grad was then hired by... Amazon. I don't think it's cheaper, it's just that a solution has yet to exist. Once it start working, it will go out at breakneck pace.

Klinky 6y ago
I'd imagine hiring PhDs to work on hard problems is not cheap, and I doubt Amazon would invest unless they believed that the long-term investment would result in a cheaper outcome than what they have now. The problem is that human labor has been so cheap that automation is often not even worth any R&D effort for most companies. If human labor cost more, this would cause more impetus upstream to find automated solutions. Also the burger-flipping robot and self-driving car have been just around the corner for the last two decades. Although the end solution to those issues may very well be that we need to stop eating so many burgers and stop designing cities around cars, rather than robots coming in to allow even more consumption.
- gowld 6y ago
  Full automation is always out of reach, but McDonald's is extremely automated.
  - Klinky 6y ago
    Is that automation or scale? Doing things on a large scale can be more efficient and require less labor, but McDonald's is still hiring people to do effectively the same thing in the stores as they did 50 years ago. A lot of industrial food tech is not new or cutting edge, and has limits, like you can't freeze dry a fully-made hamburger for later consumption.
    - Animats 6y ago
      That problem was solved over 50 years ago, but it wasn't cost effective.[1] [1] https://youtu.be/FmXLqImT1wE https://youtu.be/FmXLqImT1wE
    - LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
      Does it matter? There are refrigerated burgers of all sorts available in the supermarkets, you only have to microwave or bake them after unpacking. I think I've even seen some where you leave them in the packaging during microwaving. Never tried them, so far. I really mean fully 'assembled' and prepared burgers, not only the patties. In a box like the ones from the golden M, just printed different.
      - Klinky 6y ago
        It does, because large scale lends itself to automation more easily, but even still, you have manual labor with unloading and loading, maintaining and reconfiguring the line, quality control, packaging, and delivery. A lot of these processes are not new, and have been around for decades. The McDonald's store doesn't have a machine make your hamburger, there is still significant manual labor involved, which hasn't really changed in decades. Even your frozen burger likely had significant manual labor investment in it at the factory it was produced. Also by "fully prepared", try adding fresh ingredients like lettuce, tomato, onion, freezing it and then microwaving it. I am sure it will be enjoyable to the palate. Even without the fresh ingredients, most will find the microwave burger inferior to even the cheapest McDonald's burger.
        LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
        Hm. I don't know. Bakeries for the buns are highly automated. The 'assembly' and packaging could be too, like for deep frozen pizza. Also Sri Racha helps with almost anything! ;> Have you ever tried to 'tune' a quarterpounder, double-cheese, or simple cheesburger with mild (green cap/Huy Fong alike) Sri Racha? Just a few small splotches.
        Klinky 6y ago
        There has been automation in factories, but the point is that the innovation hasn't continued, and that the automation seen in factories typically stays in factories, which require volume/scale. There have been "minor" incremental improvements over the years, but industrialized food production was heavily automated all the way back in the 50's. You simply cannot put a machine that pumps out 10,000 frozen pizzas an hour into a Domino's storefront, and when you scale it down, it becomes too costly, impractical, or the product quality is not the same as that desired. It's basically the "last mile" problem. When we talk of burger-flipping robots replacing the McDonald's worker, the answer isn't "McDonald's is already highly automated", as they still have a huge number of employees doing manual labor at every store. There is no burger-flipping robot, and their factories featuring automation(as most factories have for decades) hasn't really changed the number of employees they need in each store.
thaumasiotes 6y ago
> I don't think it's cheaper, it's just that a solution has yet to exist. Once it start working, it will go out at breakneck pace. I don't think this is a single problem. There are several dimensions to it, and you can trivialize some at the expense of others. Stop storing things compactly in bins and you can make it a lot easier to grab those things with a robotic arm. Give everything very robust packaging and you no longer have to worry about appropriate grip strength.
- hinkley 6y ago
  There still seems to be a degree of 2.5 dimensional thinking with the current robotics systems. If you occupy the entire volume of a warehouse, then the volume occupied per object becomes less of an issue than when you have huge air columns between the roof and robots, workers, or shelves. You could move most of the manual handling to the ingest side; having truck workers load product into what amounts to a fancy Pez dispenser customized to each high volume product. The humans spend more time dealing with oddball items and trying to arrange the order to fit within the box, instead of grabbing things out of bins.
  - Animats 6y ago
    You could move most of the manual handling to the ingest side; having truck workers load product into what amounts to a fancy Pez dispenser customized to each high volume product. Now available in Germany.[1] Except the manual handling on the input side is done by robots. General bin-picking is still hard. But bin-picking of roughly rectangular objects in a moderate size range works pretty well. [1] https://youtu.be/B_a2YcstoN0 https://youtu.be/B_a2YcstoN0
  - LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
    I've thought of something like this, but for the stores/supermarkets themselves. Because why not? edit: Looking at how things are packaged and presented in the lower end like Lidl/Aldi, they are often standing on a pallet, either in full carton boxes, or just with carton around the top and bottom and the sides, stacked to maybe a meter, or 1.20m high. And the boxes are perforated in such ways that you can pull on some marked corner to open them easily.

Klinky 6y ago

I'd imagine hiring PhDs to work on hard problems is not cheap, and I doubt Amazon would invest unless they believed that the long-term investment would result in a cheaper outcome than what they have now. The problem is that human labor has been so cheap that automation is often not even worth any R&D effort for most companies. If human labor cost more, this would cause more impetus upstream to find automated solutions. Also the burger-flipping robot and self-driving car have been just around the corner for the last two decades. Although the end solution to those issues may very well be that we need to stop eating so many burgers and stop designing cities around cars, rather than robots coming in to allow even more consumption.

gowld 6y ago
Full automation is always out of reach, but McDonald's is extremely automated.
- Klinky 6y ago
  Is that automation or scale? Doing things on a large scale can be more efficient and require less labor, but McDonald's is still hiring people to do effectively the same thing in the stores as they did 50 years ago. A lot of industrial food tech is not new or cutting edge, and has limits, like you can't freeze dry a fully-made hamburger for later consumption.
  - Animats 6y ago
    That problem was solved over 50 years ago, but it wasn't cost effective.[1] [1] https://youtu.be/FmXLqImT1wE https://youtu.be/FmXLqImT1wE
  - LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
    Does it matter? There are refrigerated burgers of all sorts available in the supermarkets, you only have to microwave or bake them after unpacking. I think I've even seen some where you leave them in the packaging during microwaving. Never tried them, so far. I really mean fully 'assembled' and prepared burgers, not only the patties. In a box like the ones from the golden M, just printed different.
    - Klinky 6y ago
      It does, because large scale lends itself to automation more easily, but even still, you have manual labor with unloading and loading, maintaining and reconfiguring the line, quality control, packaging, and delivery. A lot of these processes are not new, and have been around for decades. The McDonald's store doesn't have a machine make your hamburger, there is still significant manual labor involved, which hasn't really changed in decades. Even your frozen burger likely had significant manual labor investment in it at the factory it was produced. Also by "fully prepared", try adding fresh ingredients like lettuce, tomato, onion, freezing it and then microwaving it. I am sure it will be enjoyable to the palate. Even without the fresh ingredients, most will find the microwave burger inferior to even the cheapest McDonald's burger.
      - LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
        Hm. I don't know. Bakeries for the buns are highly automated. The 'assembly' and packaging could be too, like for deep frozen pizza. Also Sri Racha helps with almost anything! ;> Have you ever tried to 'tune' a quarterpounder, double-cheese, or simple cheesburger with mild (green cap/Huy Fong alike) Sri Racha? Just a few small splotches.
        Klinky 6y ago
        There has been automation in factories, but the point is that the innovation hasn't continued, and that the automation seen in factories typically stays in factories, which require volume/scale. There have been "minor" incremental improvements over the years, but industrialized food production was heavily automated all the way back in the 50's. You simply cannot put a machine that pumps out 10,000 frozen pizzas an hour into a Domino's storefront, and when you scale it down, it becomes too costly, impractical, or the product quality is not the same as that desired. It's basically the "last mile" problem. When we talk of burger-flipping robots replacing the McDonald's worker, the answer isn't "McDonald's is already highly automated", as they still have a huge number of employees doing manual labor at every store. There is no burger-flipping robot, and their factories featuring automation(as most factories have for decades) hasn't really changed the number of employees they need in each store.

thaumasiotes 6y ago

> I don't think it's cheaper, it's just that a solution has yet to exist. Once it start working, it will go out at breakneck pace. I don't think this is a single problem. There are several dimensions to it, and you can trivialize some at the expense of others. Stop storing things compactly in bins and you can make it a lot easier to grab those things with a robotic arm. Give everything very robust packaging and you no longer have to worry about appropriate grip strength.

hinkley 6y ago
There still seems to be a degree of 2.5 dimensional thinking with the current robotics systems. If you occupy the entire volume of a warehouse, then the volume occupied per object becomes less of an issue than when you have huge air columns between the roof and robots, workers, or shelves. You could move most of the manual handling to the ingest side; having truck workers load product into what amounts to a fancy Pez dispenser customized to each high volume product. The humans spend more time dealing with oddball items and trying to arrange the order to fit within the box, instead of grabbing things out of bins.
- Animats 6y ago
  You could move most of the manual handling to the ingest side; having truck workers load product into what amounts to a fancy Pez dispenser customized to each high volume product. Now available in Germany.[1] Except the manual handling on the input side is done by robots. General bin-picking is still hard. But bin-picking of roughly rectangular objects in a moderate size range works pretty well. [1] https://youtu.be/B_a2YcstoN0 https://youtu.be/B_a2YcstoN0
- LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
  I've thought of something like this, but for the stores/supermarkets themselves. Because why not? edit: Looking at how things are packaged and presented in the lower end like Lidl/Aldi, they are often standing on a pallet, either in full carton boxes, or just with carton around the top and bottom and the sides, stacked to maybe a meter, or 1.20m high. And the boxes are perforated in such ways that you can pull on some marked corner to open them easily.