4 ms·

It's a little unfair to call this 80% of a solution, but it pretty much is. The demonstrated speed is awful, which is alright in theory since you can just run

It's a little unfair to call this 80% of a solution, but it pretty much is. The demonstrated speed is awful, which is alright in theory since you can just run more of them in parallel, but it does pose an issue if it's added to a facility that is running near capacity and can't put more trailers on doors. 50 lb limit is below state of the art (humans), but some companies have that as a limit. It's ok. The real deal breaker is that it seems to be designed solely for cube volume, and not just any cubes, perfectly regular cubes. The demo videos also seem to be very light stuff (10-20 lbs?) and have a lot of impermeable surface like tape, I'd guess that 50 lbs is only doable under very good circumstances. Maybe even dusty boxes would be a problem. edit: 40-50lbs is plenty for cardboard cubes to warp, flex, start breaking apart, etc depending on the contents. This happens even with a human holding onto opposite corners, relying on a single flat surface just isn't very robust. I think grip is the big problem. When a robot can reliably toss poly bags, strapped printer paper boxes, and tubes, it's going to get a lot of use. I've seen that sort of stuff for smaller things, but it seems to be extremely hard to scale up to heavier weights. It's a bit funny, but this is probably 5x as useful in reverse, loading trailers and pallets.

gtsop 5y ago
Is there a problem if you keep using both machines for a big chunk of the workload but also humans for the edge cases you describe?
sokoloff 5y ago
Many warehouses do have the limit you mention: limited dock doors. It seems like building pallets and loading the trailer with a forktruck is a better plan than this thing. (You can build pallets anywhere inside the warehouse, not just in a trailer on a live dock. You give up maybe 6-9% of maximum volume that way, but humans/this robot aren’t packing to 100.00% either. To hit 4.5 seconds cycle time on average, this thing is going to be cranking. I wonder what the centripetal acceleration required from the outside of the box is to let the arm complete its rotation in ~2 seconds is. That’s 180° of motion, with a start and stop ramp. Maybe I’d give them 3 seconds loaded if they can achieve 1.5 seconds unloaded. Will have to wait til after dinner to work it out, but it seems not a trivial force.
- Closi 5y ago
  > It seems like building pallets and loading the trailer with a forktruck is a better plan than this thing This is fine for domestic loads, but anything coming out of a container (or going in one, depending on the destination) is probably going to be stuffed for transport efficiency (or best case, slip sheeted). Palletised contained loads are rare in my experience due to the space efficiency loss (particularly at the moment with current freight rates). Even slip sheeting generally leads to shipping too much fresh air. 6% to 9% is on the low end - I would estimate the difference is closer to 20%. It’s at least 10cm per pallet, and assuming they are double stacked, with 10cm left on top for loading, that would be 30cm of the 2.5m height which is already 12% of the container fill before you even consider the space between pallets and all pallet heights not being at the absolute maximum allowable. It takes about 8 hours to unstuff a container by hand, so you can quite easily work out the trade off against shipment costs depending on your freight costs. (My day job is a logistics consultant)
  - freemint 5y ago
    Out of curiosity do you MILP solvers in your day job and if so which ones?
    - Closi 5y ago
      We occasionally use a package called Lindo depending on what the problem is (typically unique transport optimisation problems), but try to formulate problems/solutions so they don't require a MILP solver wherever possible (it's better to remove any black boxes if you can). One advantage of Lindo is that it has a version that lets us integrate the solver into an excel spreadsheet, which helps us share the model with clients and makes it easier to explain to them (and let's them see the workings, as it's built in a tool that the client already knows how to use).
sysOpOpPERAND 5y ago
i was looking at the grip as well. i wonder why they didn't choose something more like an inflated or some type of adjustable box to pick up the objects. what i would do is make the arm a detachable accessory and give people different grip options using something like a quick connect. that way factories can swap out the arm for something more fitting to their use case. at some point robots will have to have some hookup standards so other companies can jump in and build upon others progress.

gtsop 5y ago

Is there a problem if you keep using both machines for a big chunk of the workload but also humans for the edge cases you describe?

sokoloff 5y ago

Many warehouses do have the limit you mention: limited dock doors. It seems like building pallets and loading the trailer with a forktruck is a better plan than this thing. (You can build pallets anywhere inside the warehouse, not just in a trailer on a live dock. You give up maybe 6-9% of maximum volume that way, but humans/this robot aren’t packing to 100.00% either. To hit 4.5 seconds cycle time on average, this thing is going to be cranking. I wonder what the centripetal acceleration required from the outside of the box is to let the arm complete its rotation in ~2 seconds is. That’s 180° of motion, with a start and stop ramp. Maybe I’d give them 3 seconds loaded if they can achieve 1.5 seconds unloaded. Will have to wait til after dinner to work it out, but it seems not a trivial force.

Closi 5y ago
> It seems like building pallets and loading the trailer with a forktruck is a better plan than this thing This is fine for domestic loads, but anything coming out of a container (or going in one, depending on the destination) is probably going to be stuffed for transport efficiency (or best case, slip sheeted). Palletised contained loads are rare in my experience due to the space efficiency loss (particularly at the moment with current freight rates). Even slip sheeting generally leads to shipping too much fresh air. 6% to 9% is on the low end - I would estimate the difference is closer to 20%. It’s at least 10cm per pallet, and assuming they are double stacked, with 10cm left on top for loading, that would be 30cm of the 2.5m height which is already 12% of the container fill before you even consider the space between pallets and all pallet heights not being at the absolute maximum allowable. It takes about 8 hours to unstuff a container by hand, so you can quite easily work out the trade off against shipment costs depending on your freight costs. (My day job is a logistics consultant)
- freemint 5y ago
  Out of curiosity do you MILP solvers in your day job and if so which ones?
  - Closi 5y ago
    We occasionally use a package called Lindo depending on what the problem is (typically unique transport optimisation problems), but try to formulate problems/solutions so they don't require a MILP solver wherever possible (it's better to remove any black boxes if you can). One advantage of Lindo is that it has a version that lets us integrate the solver into an excel spreadsheet, which helps us share the model with clients and makes it easier to explain to them (and let's them see the workings, as it's built in a tool that the client already knows how to use).

sysOpOpPERAND 5y ago

i was looking at the grip as well. i wonder why they didn't choose something more like an inflated or some type of adjustable box to pick up the objects. what i would do is make the arm a detachable accessory and give people different grip options using something like a quick connect. that way factories can swap out the arm for something more fitting to their use case. at some point robots will have to have some hookup standards so other companies can jump in and build upon others progress.