5 ms·

Seems like this is a competitor to my company's ULTRA Loader: https://www.bastiansolutions.com/assets/1/6/ultra_cutsheet_3.6.pdf https://www.bastiansolutions.c

Seems like this is a competitor to my company's ULTRA Loader: https://www.bastiansolutions.com/assets/1/6/ultra_cutsheet_3.6.pdf https://www.bastiansolutions.com/assets/1/6/ultra_cutsheet_3... I work in a different division, so I can't really speak to how this was developed. But, it's interesting to see the different design decisions, particularly the decisions to integrate or not integrate conveyor with the robot itself. Our robot is much larger due to the integrated conveyor, but from what I understand this simplifies navigation. We remain stationary on the outside of the trailer, so we sidestep the problem of navigating in an arbitrary trailer. This is a big challenge according to some of the AGV vendors I've spoken to. Maybe it comes down to mapping techniques - not my area.

jcims 5y ago
Any interesting design or engineering challenges that the HN crowd might not be aware of (but certainly are willing to opine on :)?
- brink 5y ago
  I worked on something similar over the summer. The most difficult thing about this problem is mixed size boxes. Knowing where every box is is easy when they're all the same dimension and stacked neatly, but what about when they're packed randomly, many boxes are askew, and they're all different sizes? Then you need to get into complicated time-of-flight sensors, point clouds, surface/box recognition logic/AI, etc..
  - chairmanwow1 5y ago
    Wouldn’t a strobe lidar be perfect for this? Or would you just want CV segmentation?
  - MisterBastahrd 5y ago
    When I worked at a grocery store, our solution for re-stacking pallets of merchandise was to place the largest boxes at the bottom and build upward with smaller boxes. Obviously this wouldn't be a great way to do things in a shipping container given the amount of vertically wasted space, but it worked in a warehouse. Of course, the reason we were re-stacking pallets is because our original managers were so bad at managing inventory that the 20ish backstock carts were full, so we would routinely have 15-25 pallets of backstock in the warehouse... when ideally the carts should only ever be half full. Saved their jobs when I took the order gun from them, lol.
    - jcims 5y ago
      The nice thing about shipping containers is that you have walls that can provide lateral stability and a bit of retention. Loading for UPS you would basically play 3D Tetris building walls of boxes. As you neared the end of each row you would pick a box 2-3 inches too wide to fit and smash it in there to lock everything up. To unload you most reverse the process. Unless it gets busy then you just pull the whole wall down at one time and bulldoze the boxes onto the rollers. Restacking pallets in warehouses is way harder. It’s more like building a house of cards but no card is the same size.
    - KineticLensman 5y ago
      > place the largest boxes at the bottom and build upward with smaller boxes I think this is actually a basic rule in packing / loading. Get the big things in first and then work around them with the small things. It's how I load my car when going on a big trip. The main exception is things that you will need quickly without having to unload everything. 'Big things first' is also why mixtures (e.g. muesli) settle in transit with the larger pieces at the top and dust at the bottom. Small things can work their way under the big things but the converse isn't true, unless the whole volume is vigorously shaken.
  - jollybean 5y ago
    The world changed quite a lot due to standardized shipping containers. It was a mess before that. I really do think the same could be applied to shipping packaging. There are 12 sized boxes and that's that. They need to be stacked a certain way. Or maybe a bit of flex here and there for some things. Nobody really has the wherewithal or power to do that, but you know ... Xi could. I can see that being something China imposes, and then it's a standard that naturally gets exported.
    - IneffablePigeon 5y ago
      Amazon basically does this, I think? As a consumer, I hate it, because I end up with a huge box and loads of useless paper whenever something isn't the right aspect ratio for one of the standard boxes. Obviously for distribution of stock you could probably be smarter about it and waste less space/cardboard since you've probably got lots of each size of item.
      - jollybean 5y ago
        Yes I detest that. For distribution it would work. For end-consumer shipping, they should frankly have boxes that 'fit' perfectly. Amazon should have a 'box maker machine' that makes all the dam boxes on the spot as needed from cardboard. Or forget boxes, how about a really light mesh?
        DougBTX 5y ago
        They pretty much do this in some cases, they use boxes like this[0] which fit their contents based on where they are taped. [0] https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B094DL2GQ6 https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B094DL2GQ6
        Schiendelman 5y ago
        I worked for Amazon in sustainability for some time. "Fitting" 'perfectly' requires literally billions of shape combinations, because multiple items ship in one box. I question whether it would save any holistic measure of energy/emissions/waste to solve that problem to any measure of 'perfectly'. The work Amazon has done to change box types, switch to bags, etc., has reduced waste considerably per package, though I suspect the absolute amount of waste has continued to increase with business growth.
Ericson2314 5y ago
Yeah the type of thing Boston Dynamics does is sexy for investors / the general public obsessed with anthropomorphism, but it is very unclear whether this is the most efficient way to automate a task. On the other hand, this sort of highly incremental "replace a human, warehouse stays the same" automation is in a weird way lower risk. Sure, the robot is hard to get right and might not work well, but you can try it out without reconfiguring the rest of your warehouse. Firms not really being pressed on labor costs, might still more "leisurly" want to to automated. They would do this less because profitability demands it, than because they are curiousn about either raising profits or cutting costs to induce more demand. (And indeed, one suspects the demand for most do-hickies amazon fullfills is highly elastic. Such "experiments" need to more low risk than high reward, and with this sort of automation, Boston dynamics doing the fancy pants robotics work absorbs all their risk. Perfect! For the type of automation PP is talking about, in contrast t oI would encourage one to read https://homesignalblog.wordpress.com/2020/12/25/industrial-sprawl/ https://homesignalblog.wordpress.com/2020/12/25/industrial-s... If we really wanted to be as efficient possible, things would have gone very differently: - We would still be using way more rail, and industry would be clustered around that rail minimizing trip distances, - We would apply the simple logic of containerization at multiple levels, creating smaller countainers to fit inside larger containers - Railway switching yards would have tons of simple af crude pnumatic push and pulls, shuffling the fixed-sized boxes between containers. This is something like the Factorio model. We probably could have done this with 1980s-level internet, barcodes, etc. Or at least 1980s tech with 1990s cheaper prices and more advanced supply chains. A lot of people "oh, it's harder than it looks, etc. etc." I dunno. I really don't believe it: the hard parts here are mainly getting people to coordinate on the standards, label things properly, etc. Lack of complete monopolies makes that very difficult. I think we simply don't do these things long ago not because we can't but because such coordination and physical investment-heavy automation is expensive for firms, and they only do it "on demand" when there are labor market issues. The more we automate, the weaker and cheaper labor gets, and the weaker and cheaper labor gets in a consumer economy the more sluggish everything gets as there are aggregate demand issues. Together this means we stop automating way before our technological potential. This, to me, is the most exciting part about UBI + shrinking the work week. Make labor scarse. Make aggregate demand strong and extremely reliable. Then automating finally makes economic sense, and for shear glory (and more leisure :)) we can engineer unbridled.

jcims 5y ago

Any interesting design or engineering challenges that the HN crowd might not be aware of (but certainly are willing to opine on :)?

brink 5y ago
I worked on something similar over the summer. The most difficult thing about this problem is mixed size boxes. Knowing where every box is is easy when they're all the same dimension and stacked neatly, but what about when they're packed randomly, many boxes are askew, and they're all different sizes? Then you need to get into complicated time-of-flight sensors, point clouds, surface/box recognition logic/AI, etc..
- chairmanwow1 5y ago
  Wouldn’t a strobe lidar be perfect for this? Or would you just want CV segmentation?
- MisterBastahrd 5y ago
  When I worked at a grocery store, our solution for re-stacking pallets of merchandise was to place the largest boxes at the bottom and build upward with smaller boxes. Obviously this wouldn't be a great way to do things in a shipping container given the amount of vertically wasted space, but it worked in a warehouse. Of course, the reason we were re-stacking pallets is because our original managers were so bad at managing inventory that the 20ish backstock carts were full, so we would routinely have 15-25 pallets of backstock in the warehouse... when ideally the carts should only ever be half full. Saved their jobs when I took the order gun from them, lol.
  - jcims 5y ago
    The nice thing about shipping containers is that you have walls that can provide lateral stability and a bit of retention. Loading for UPS you would basically play 3D Tetris building walls of boxes. As you neared the end of each row you would pick a box 2-3 inches too wide to fit and smash it in there to lock everything up. To unload you most reverse the process. Unless it gets busy then you just pull the whole wall down at one time and bulldoze the boxes onto the rollers. Restacking pallets in warehouses is way harder. It’s more like building a house of cards but no card is the same size.
  - KineticLensman 5y ago
    > place the largest boxes at the bottom and build upward with smaller boxes I think this is actually a basic rule in packing / loading. Get the big things in first and then work around them with the small things. It's how I load my car when going on a big trip. The main exception is things that you will need quickly without having to unload everything. 'Big things first' is also why mixtures (e.g. muesli) settle in transit with the larger pieces at the top and dust at the bottom. Small things can work their way under the big things but the converse isn't true, unless the whole volume is vigorously shaken.
- jollybean 5y ago
  The world changed quite a lot due to standardized shipping containers. It was a mess before that. I really do think the same could be applied to shipping packaging. There are 12 sized boxes and that's that. They need to be stacked a certain way. Or maybe a bit of flex here and there for some things. Nobody really has the wherewithal or power to do that, but you know ... Xi could. I can see that being something China imposes, and then it's a standard that naturally gets exported.
  - IneffablePigeon 5y ago
    Amazon basically does this, I think? As a consumer, I hate it, because I end up with a huge box and loads of useless paper whenever something isn't the right aspect ratio for one of the standard boxes. Obviously for distribution of stock you could probably be smarter about it and waste less space/cardboard since you've probably got lots of each size of item.
    - jollybean 5y ago
      Yes I detest that. For distribution it would work. For end-consumer shipping, they should frankly have boxes that 'fit' perfectly. Amazon should have a 'box maker machine' that makes all the dam boxes on the spot as needed from cardboard. Or forget boxes, how about a really light mesh?
      - DougBTX 5y ago
        They pretty much do this in some cases, they use boxes like this[0] which fit their contents based on where they are taped. [0] https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B094DL2GQ6 https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B094DL2GQ6
      - Schiendelman 5y ago
        I worked for Amazon in sustainability for some time. "Fitting" 'perfectly' requires literally billions of shape combinations, because multiple items ship in one box. I question whether it would save any holistic measure of energy/emissions/waste to solve that problem to any measure of 'perfectly'. The work Amazon has done to change box types, switch to bags, etc., has reduced waste considerably per package, though I suspect the absolute amount of waste has continued to increase with business growth.

Ericson2314 5y ago

Yeah the type of thing Boston Dynamics does is sexy for investors / the general public obsessed with anthropomorphism, but it is very unclear whether this is the most efficient way to automate a task. On the other hand, this sort of highly incremental "replace a human, warehouse stays the same" automation is in a weird way lower risk. Sure, the robot is hard to get right and might not work well, but you can try it out without reconfiguring the rest of your warehouse. Firms not really being pressed on labor costs, might still more "leisurly" want to to automated. They would do this less because profitability demands it, than because they are curiousn about either raising profits or cutting costs to induce more demand. (And indeed, one suspects the demand for most do-hickies amazon fullfills is highly elastic. Such "experiments" need to more low risk than high reward, and with this sort of automation, Boston dynamics doing the fancy pants robotics work absorbs all their risk. Perfect! For the type of automation PP is talking about, in contrast t oI would encourage one to read https://homesignalblog.wordpress.com/2020/12/25/industrial-sprawl/ https://homesignalblog.wordpress.com/2020/12/25/industrial-s... If we really wanted to be as efficient possible, things would have gone very differently: - We would still be using way more rail, and industry would be clustered around that rail minimizing trip distances, - We would apply the simple logic of containerization at multiple levels, creating smaller countainers to fit inside larger containers - Railway switching yards would have tons of simple af crude pnumatic push and pulls, shuffling the fixed-sized boxes between containers. This is something like the Factorio model. We probably could have done this with 1980s-level internet, barcodes, etc. Or at least 1980s tech with 1990s cheaper prices and more advanced supply chains. A lot of people "oh, it's harder than it looks, etc. etc." I dunno. I really don't believe it: the hard parts here are mainly getting people to coordinate on the standards, label things properly, etc. Lack of complete monopolies makes that very difficult. I think we simply don't do these things long ago not because we can't but because such coordination and physical investment-heavy automation is expensive for firms, and they only do it "on demand" when there are labor market issues. The more we automate, the weaker and cheaper labor gets, and the weaker and cheaper labor gets in a consumer economy the more sluggish everything gets as there are aggregate demand issues. Together this means we stop automating way before our technological potential. This, to me, is the most exciting part about UBI + shrinking the work week. Make labor scarse. Make aggregate demand strong and extremely reliable. Then automating finally makes economic sense, and for shear glory (and more leisure :)) we can engineer unbridled.