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So you learned a lot of subtle features that helped you pick items more efficiently? But robots can have senses that humans can't. Why don't they just embed an

by klipt 4y ago

So you learned a lot of subtle features that helped you pick items more efficiently? But robots can have senses that humans can't. Why don't they just embed an RFID chip in every box, give the robot sensors to triangulate the position of the RFID code matching the desired product, and grab that?

WillAdams 4y ago
Yeah, I used to joke that I wasn't being paid enough for the brain cells I was using to memorize such minutiae. RFID would certainly be one workable approach. I'm still surprised that Amazon hasn't just chosen to pre-package everything in their warehouses, then do the stacking in such a way that a picker (or robot) is told which row/column a given product of a box is in. But, I guess that gets back to OP's observation on the expense of warehouse space/real estate.
- mabbo 4y ago
  Yep, storage space but also multi item shipments. When Amazon puts two items into the same box, they massively reduce shipping costs. And shipping costs are the biggest cost they have.
mabbo 4y ago
> Why don't they just embed an RFID chip in every box, give the robot sensors to triangulate the position of the RFID code matching the desired product, and grab that? Whenever you start a sentence with "why don't they just", remember that there are literally hundreds of people whose entire job it is to solve these problems, and there's probably very good reasons. In this case, the answer is "noise". A fellow I knew worked on a project at Amazon fulfillment to use RFID enabled shipping labels so that ideally they could load the truck and know which packages were on it. It was a total failure. If the sensors are high enough to read every package, then you'll read half the packages 20 feet away as well. If it's low enough to only detect the ones you want, it won't detect all of them. "Triangulate the position of the RFID code" is just not really a thing. Maybe in the future, but today RFID is just not that reliable. Also the labor cost to add an RFID tag to every item is prohibitively high.

by klipt 4y ago

WillAdams 4y ago

Yeah, I used to joke that I wasn't being paid enough for the brain cells I was using to memorize such minutiae. RFID would certainly be one workable approach. I'm still surprised that Amazon hasn't just chosen to pre-package everything in their warehouses, then do the stacking in such a way that a picker (or robot) is told which row/column a given product of a box is in. But, I guess that gets back to OP's observation on the expense of warehouse space/real estate.

mabbo 4y ago
Yep, storage space but also multi item shipments. When Amazon puts two items into the same box, they massively reduce shipping costs. And shipping costs are the biggest cost they have.

mabbo 4y ago

> Why don't they just embed an RFID chip in every box, give the robot sensors to triangulate the position of the RFID code matching the desired product, and grab that? Whenever you start a sentence with "why don't they just", remember that there are literally hundreds of people whose entire job it is to solve these problems, and there's probably very good reasons. In this case, the answer is "noise". A fellow I knew worked on a project at Amazon fulfillment to use RFID enabled shipping labels so that ideally they could load the truck and know which packages were on it. It was a total failure. If the sensors are high enough to read every package, then you'll read half the packages 20 feet away as well. If it's low enough to only detect the ones you want, it won't detect all of them. "Triangulate the position of the RFID code" is just not really a thing. Maybe in the future, but today RFID is just not that reliable. Also the labor cost to add an RFID tag to every item is prohibitively high.