This is almost inevitable. The current situation is designed for humans. The boxes generally hold together; the number that fail either structurally (deformed

This is almost inevitable. The current situation is designed for humans. The boxes generally hold together; the number that fail either structurally (deformed) or catastrophically (contents destroyed) is probably within some tolerance. Deformed boxes cost basically nothing with humans. These robots appear to have a gentler touch than what I'm guessing humans do, based on the health of the cardboard I receive from humans. They might make it feasible to create re-usable plastic boxes that have some kind of an anchor point. I've got a friend that works in the field and have seen their machines in operation and how they work on their contracts. The use cases right now seem to be entirely human defined; i.e. it handles items that weren't modified to make it easier on the robot, and it handles items in a random orientation. Could be turned, could be upside down, could be balanced on a corner against another item. If robots take over more of the pipeline, you can start guaranteeing that boxes are oriented correctly, which gives you a lot more practical options than "cover it in hooks, and we'll worry about how to stack it later". Space in containers is also a big concern, so anything that increases the size of a good is generally bad (last-mile delivery excepted).