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> Imagine a wireless factory robot in a situation where a worker suddenly steps in front of it and the robot needs to make an immediate decision. If there is a

by amluto 3y ago

> Imagine a wireless factory robot in a situation where a worker suddenly steps in front of it and the robot needs to make an immediate decision. If there is a factory that allows a worker to step in front of a robot and depends on a wireless communication mechanism for safety, something is very very wrong.

TaylorAlexander 3y ago
Yeah that is a horrible example.
jandrese 3y ago
I guess it has to call back to the manufacturer's cloud service to see if the factory subscribed to the "avoid crushing people" option.
- acheron 3y ago
  One crush avoidance is 10 gems, but buy a pack of avoidance for 200 gems!
- g-b-r 3y ago
  Oh I'm sure they'll use the edge for critical functions!!!
jauntywundrkind 3y ago
Discarding ideas out of hand is easy & cheap. Why do you think this so absolutely unacceptable an idea? A factory seems like a big space where there could perhaps be a predictable well known radio spectrum, and where that spectrum could reliably be monitored for stability. Unlike most spaces, there's a lot of possibilities for controlling the environment well, if you wanted; no end-user devices allowed, nothing but known systems. This feels like you could very quickly get to some kind of known state. "We will be able to send priority signals within under 2ms." Or some such quality metric. Keep a signal analyzer going: any time this isn't met, everything goes into an independent failsafe shutdown mode until the issue is debugged and started up again. Our instincts to judge & discard ideas & possibilities is so dangerous, is such a deep human peril. Your instinct feels like it comes from a good place, feels correct, but ultimately, this is acting in fear uncertainty & doubt, & your execution rests on no contentions other than it's own self certainty. I think we must be much more thorough in our thinking & arguing, must not leap to discard ideas so quickly totally & casually; FUD must be rooted out deep within ourselves & challenged. Let not progress be onstructed by meek wills.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
  I think it is easy to dismiss because you should always keep squishy humans away from the unthinking machines. If they are always separated during routine operation, you have eliminated potential failure modes that could result in a fatal injury. Sure, engineer the machines to immediately halt if a human is detected, but also design the system so that close physical proximity is never required.
  - jauntywundrkind 3y ago
    Have you done anything other than restate the initial FUD? I think I have gone through efforts to elaborate why I think high reliability is achievable over wireless systems. It seems irrational to me to hate wireless so. If I were a squishy human in a factory, I feel like I would far far far prefer some highly reliable central systems with near godlike omniscience of the factory floor watch things, & use well quantified known wireless channels (albeit no WiFi that exists today, without a lot of other promises) to communicate, than rely on individual robots relying on embodied knowledge. You all sound like cranks to me, given how incredibly fantastically super seriously I would want the former, not the latter.
- TaylorAlexander 3y ago
  > Why do you think this so absolutely unacceptable an idea? Because industry standard safety practices are there for a reason and taken very seriously. The parent poster said: > allows a worker to step in front of a robot and > depends on a wireless communication mechanism for safety But industry standard safety practices would ensure at least one of those is not true. What the person you are replying to is suggesting is that you can have robots with wireless safety mechanisms or you can have robots which people can walk in front of (which have wired safety mechanisms), you just do not want both. That is a pretty mild claim you are responding to. I am a robotics engineer and we are very aware of the risks robots pose to human beings. Furthermore business management is very aware of the liability concerns these risks pose to the business. It isn't FUD to say that we would not put humans in the path of a robot which had wireless safety systems. That's just a fact of standard practices.
MR4D 3y ago
Have you ever been to a modern warehouse? There are hundreds of those things moving around, often with heavy loads (enough to injure if not enough to kill). And it has been that way for years. [0] [0] - https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-warehouse-robots/ https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-warehouse-robots/ EDIT : Adding Amazon’s page on robots that also talks about safety: https://www.amazon.science/latest-news/amazon-robotics-autonomous-drive-units-hercules-pegasus-xanthus-xbot https://www.amazon.science/latest-news/amazon-robotics-auton...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- amluto 3y ago
  Read your link: > The drives have enough smarts to move safely around humans, communicate with nearby robots so they do not collide, and report any problems like spills or obstructions back to the controller. The robots are clearly designed to fail safe if they cannot communicate with the central controller. It would be an extremely poor design to have them operate in an unsafe mode in the event of interference in an unlicensed spectrum (or even a licensed spectrum, for that matter).
- parker_mountain 3y ago
  > If there is a factory that allows a worker to step in front of a robot and depends on a wireless communication mechanism for safety, something is very very wrong. All of those robots leave enough threshold to avoid collisions with other robots should they need to stop suddenly. The robots do on device calculations and report back their status to the central server to help other robots route around "damage" (stopped robots, for example). Instead, they give the robots general path instructions with enough buffer area to allow the robots to not trigger their own on device collision sensing. In the links that you gave, it's very clear that the robots do not depend on communicating with a central server if a worker steps in front of a robot. By the way, in warehouses without such advanced protection, humans are _absolutely_ banned from the floor and it's treated like any other large industrial scale operation, including fail safes on gates (if gate is open, do not allow restart and human presence sensing (often through a badge of some sort). Failure of this sort would lead to massive liabilities to the warehouse and robot owners. They are heavily incentivized to do things the right way. I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's actually quite advanced and safe. And it has been that way for years.

by amluto 3y ago

TaylorAlexander 3y ago

Yeah that is a horrible example.

jandrese 3y ago

I guess it has to call back to the manufacturer's cloud service to see if the factory subscribed to the "avoid crushing people" option.

acheron 3y ago
One crush avoidance is 10 gems, but buy a pack of avoidance for 200 gems!
g-b-r 3y ago
Oh I'm sure they'll use the edge for critical functions!!!

jauntywundrkind 3y ago

Discarding ideas out of hand is easy & cheap. Why do you think this so absolutely unacceptable an idea? A factory seems like a big space where there could perhaps be a predictable well known radio spectrum, and where that spectrum could reliably be monitored for stability. Unlike most spaces, there's a lot of possibilities for controlling the environment well, if you wanted; no end-user devices allowed, nothing but known systems. This feels like you could very quickly get to some kind of known state. "We will be able to send priority signals within under 2ms." Or some such quality metric. Keep a signal analyzer going: any time this isn't met, everything goes into an independent failsafe shutdown mode until the issue is debugged and started up again. Our instincts to judge & discard ideas & possibilities is so dangerous, is such a deep human peril. Your instinct feels like it comes from a good place, feels correct, but ultimately, this is acting in fear uncertainty & doubt, & your execution rests on no contentions other than it's own self certainty. I think we must be much more thorough in our thinking & arguing, must not leap to discard ideas so quickly totally & casually; FUD must be rooted out deep within ourselves & challenged. Let not progress be onstructed by meek wills.

0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
I think it is easy to dismiss because you should always keep squishy humans away from the unthinking machines. If they are always separated during routine operation, you have eliminated potential failure modes that could result in a fatal injury. Sure, engineer the machines to immediately halt if a human is detected, but also design the system so that close physical proximity is never required.
- jauntywundrkind 3y ago
  Have you done anything other than restate the initial FUD? I think I have gone through efforts to elaborate why I think high reliability is achievable over wireless systems. It seems irrational to me to hate wireless so. If I were a squishy human in a factory, I feel like I would far far far prefer some highly reliable central systems with near godlike omniscience of the factory floor watch things, & use well quantified known wireless channels (albeit no WiFi that exists today, without a lot of other promises) to communicate, than rely on individual robots relying on embodied knowledge. You all sound like cranks to me, given how incredibly fantastically super seriously I would want the former, not the latter.
TaylorAlexander 3y ago
> Why do you think this so absolutely unacceptable an idea? Because industry standard safety practices are there for a reason and taken very seriously. The parent poster said: > allows a worker to step in front of a robot and > depends on a wireless communication mechanism for safety But industry standard safety practices would ensure at least one of those is not true. What the person you are replying to is suggesting is that you can have robots with wireless safety mechanisms or you can have robots which people can walk in front of (which have wired safety mechanisms), you just do not want both. That is a pretty mild claim you are responding to. I am a robotics engineer and we are very aware of the risks robots pose to human beings. Furthermore business management is very aware of the liability concerns these risks pose to the business. It isn't FUD to say that we would not put humans in the path of a robot which had wireless safety systems. That's just a fact of standard practices.

MR4D 3y ago

Have you ever been to a modern warehouse? There are hundreds of those things moving around, often with heavy loads (enough to injure if not enough to kill). And it has been that way for years. [0] [0] - https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-warehouse-robots/ https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-warehouse-robots/ EDIT : Adding Amazon’s page on robots that also talks about safety: https://www.amazon.science/latest-news/amazon-robotics-autonomous-drive-units-hercules-pegasus-xanthus-xbot https://www.amazon.science/latest-news/amazon-robotics-auton...

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
amluto 3y ago
Read your link: > The drives have enough smarts to move safely around humans, communicate with nearby robots so they do not collide, and report any problems like spills or obstructions back to the controller. The robots are clearly designed to fail safe if they cannot communicate with the central controller. It would be an extremely poor design to have them operate in an unsafe mode in the event of interference in an unlicensed spectrum (or even a licensed spectrum, for that matter).
parker_mountain 3y ago
> If there is a factory that allows a worker to step in front of a robot and depends on a wireless communication mechanism for safety, something is very very wrong. All of those robots leave enough threshold to avoid collisions with other robots should they need to stop suddenly. The robots do on device calculations and report back their status to the central server to help other robots route around "damage" (stopped robots, for example). Instead, they give the robots general path instructions with enough buffer area to allow the robots to not trigger their own on device collision sensing. In the links that you gave, it's very clear that the robots do not depend on communicating with a central server if a worker steps in front of a robot. By the way, in warehouses without such advanced protection, humans are _absolutely_ banned from the floor and it's treated like any other large industrial scale operation, including fail safes on gates (if gate is open, do not allow restart and human presence sensing (often through a badge of some sort). Failure of this sort would lead to massive liabilities to the warehouse and robot owners. They are heavily incentivized to do things the right way. I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's actually quite advanced and safe. And it has been that way for years.