4 ms·

KIVA Robots Continue to Conquer Warehouses

55 points by kkleiner 17y ago

jlefo7p6 17y ago
The photo of the wide corridor of KIVA's bustling past each other struck me as beautiful. Maybe I should get some sleep ;) Like the Roomba, these guys found a way to use tech that we already have to do something magical.
tjic 17y ago
I did some contracting work at iRobot a few years back, and know a few people who are now at KIVA. Smart cookies - they deserve the success!
huhtenberg 17y ago
Note how the robots are lined up and waiting most of the time, meaning that the bottleneck is in human workers. I'm guessing it's not long till they are completely eliminated from the order assembly.
- ivankirigin 17y ago
  Your guess would be wrong. Dynamically perceiving, picking and placing irregular objects is really hard and completely unsolved. Obstacle avoidance via sonar & lasers and reliable bar code reading have been solved for a decade. They didn't create an advanced robot. They created an advanced system that works really well in whole.
  - huhtenberg 17y ago
    > They didn't create an advanced robot. They created an advanced system that works really well in whole. Of course, I understand that. But if you watch the video again, you may notice that a vast majority of items being shipped are .. boxes, not irregular shapes. Determining if the order consists entirely out of box shapes is straight-forward. And since the packaging needs not be optimal in terms of space, just not overly wasteful, so there is a lot of potential for further automation.
    - mistermann 17y ago
      True....and cardboard boxes often come with the flaps connected when they are folded...I see no reason why a robot couldn't unfold the appropriate size box for an order, leave the top flaps open (but still connected, giving at least 50% more volume than a sealed box), then a sophisticated warehouse like amazon has could likely easily treadmill individual the items into the box (in proper order according to item size, etc), scanning them as they go in to ensure success, then the fine tuning of packing could be done by a human. Some orders might not qualify for this level of automation, but thats pretty easy to figure out. I would imagine Amazon might already be doing this, anyone ever seen a video??
    - ivankirigin 17y ago
      I meant regular in the the industrial manufacturing sense. There are, at least, a few different kinds of boxes - and they are made of a warpable material. That means you need to perceive the environment, no just assume you know it. That makes it hard.
  - metachris 17y ago
    > Dynamically perceiving, picking and placing irregular objects is really hard and completely unsolved wrong. it is completely solved, but simply too expensive. in a couple of years this technology will be cheap and replace most human pick & place processes. The same thing happened during recent years and will continue with exponential groth.
ph0rque 17y ago
Reminds me of the scifi story Manna, by Marshall Brain: http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm Looks like he was off by a year on the robotic revolution, and he got the wrong industry where it starts.
- ivankirigin 17y ago
  Manna is fun, but junk. What about wealth creation from robotics implies society would be enslaved? It makes no sense at any scale.
  - jimbokun 17y ago
    How do you keep several billion people gainfully employed, with robots able to do so many tasks without supervision? It means we will need to change our economic systems to adapt to that reality. Otherwise, Manna might be the result. So, as sci-fi that makes you think, I find it useful.
    - blhack 17y ago
      THE PLOW IS GOING TO MAKE THE FARMER OBSOLETE!!! Okay, I'm kidding, of course, and I struggle with this all the time. I mean, if a factor that used to require 1000 people to build cars now only requires 100, or 50, or 1 or 0 or whatever, then what happened to the rest of the workers? They have moved on to auxiliary industries such as engineering (somebody needs to design the robots right). The endgame, however, will be the mechanized production of everything. At that point, energy will be the currency (instead of labor..think about it, paper money is just a unit of time*energy). If we can tap the near-limitless supplies of energy from fusion, we will have achieved a nearly Utopian Society.
      - donw 17y ago
        The issue is the transition; if you continue with our present economic model, as well as the prevailing cultural attitudes in the U.S., more and more workers will be marginalized, and if police and military forces can themselves be swapped out for robot counterparts, a revolution against 'The Man' becomes all but impossible. Of course, you can stop that from happening by creating 'comfortable enough' homeless shelters, and lacing the food with appropriate chemicals. The poor masses will be happy, fed, and clothed for a minimal amount of money, and can be quite easily swept under the rug. I don't think this is terribly far-fetched; culture in the U.S. seems to be highly focused on 'who has more', which is meaningless and self-destructive in a society that can readily satisfy the needs and wants of all of its inhabitants.
kkleiner 17y ago
Marshall has a lot more wrong than the year. I think his ideas are pretty ludicrous. He thinks that in the next decade or so robots will replace humans as construction workers. Does he have any idea how hard of a challenge that is? More likely is that robots will complement humans in construction, just as they are in warehousing, long before they completely replace humans.
mkull 17y ago
Does the Kiva system work with garments (hanging merchandise)?
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
muunkky 17y ago
This opens up a whole world of resource allocation algorithms. Usually the logistical mathematics is limited by human-based constraints. It might be worthwhile to throw the book out on bin-packing and random access methods and try some new, fun linear algorithms from scratch!
jerf 17y ago
Article: "itch Rosenberg, VP of Marketing at KIVA, says that human workers are giving name tags and other identifying marks to their favorite robots. At some companies, “the robots” send you a birthday card each year. We have a hard time, it seems, avoiding anthropomorphizing and adopting robots as pets. And that’s okay. They may not be cute, but blue-collar bots are a working man’s best friend." Well, if it's a choice between anthropomorphizing and demonizing, and given human psychology it probably is precisely that choice, anthropomorphizing is the radically better choice. Cultures that demonize robotics will shortly find that supremely maladaptive. I've sort of worried about the demonizing undercurrent of American culture, but perhaps it will be shown merely a Hollywood-induced fad once the rubber hits the road and we all continue to deal with ever-more robots.
jamie 17y ago
"Founder and CEO Mick Mountz experienced the challenges of existing material handling systems firsthand while working at online grocer Webvan." I wonder how many other dotcom flameouts went on to rethink the expansiveness of their plans, and started solving individual problems that caused their failure. Clearly, webvan in 2009 would stand a better chance than webvan 1999.

55 points by kkleiner 17y ago

The photo of the wide corridor of KIVA's bustling past each other struck me as beautiful. Maybe I should get some sleep ;) Like the Roomba, these guys found a way to use tech that we already have to do something magical.

tjic 17y ago

I did some contracting work at iRobot a few years back, and know a few people who are now at KIVA. Smart cookies - they deserve the success!

huhtenberg 17y ago

Note how the robots are lined up and waiting most of the time, meaning that the bottleneck is in human workers. I'm guessing it's not long till they are completely eliminated from the order assembly.

ivankirigin 17y ago
Your guess would be wrong. Dynamically perceiving, picking and placing irregular objects is really hard and completely unsolved. Obstacle avoidance via sonar & lasers and reliable bar code reading have been solved for a decade. They didn't create an advanced robot. They created an advanced system that works really well in whole.
- huhtenberg 17y ago
  > They didn't create an advanced robot. They created an advanced system that works really well in whole. Of course, I understand that. But if you watch the video again, you may notice that a vast majority of items being shipped are .. boxes, not irregular shapes. Determining if the order consists entirely out of box shapes is straight-forward. And since the packaging needs not be optimal in terms of space, just not overly wasteful, so there is a lot of potential for further automation.
  - mistermann 17y ago
    True....and cardboard boxes often come with the flaps connected when they are folded...I see no reason why a robot couldn't unfold the appropriate size box for an order, leave the top flaps open (but still connected, giving at least 50% more volume than a sealed box), then a sophisticated warehouse like amazon has could likely easily treadmill individual the items into the box (in proper order according to item size, etc), scanning them as they go in to ensure success, then the fine tuning of packing could be done by a human. Some orders might not qualify for this level of automation, but thats pretty easy to figure out. I would imagine Amazon might already be doing this, anyone ever seen a video??
  - ivankirigin 17y ago
    I meant regular in the the industrial manufacturing sense. There are, at least, a few different kinds of boxes - and they are made of a warpable material. That means you need to perceive the environment, no just assume you know it. That makes it hard.
- metachris 17y ago
  > Dynamically perceiving, picking and placing irregular objects is really hard and completely unsolved wrong. it is completely solved, but simply too expensive. in a couple of years this technology will be cheap and replace most human pick & place processes. The same thing happened during recent years and will continue with exponential groth.

ph0rque 17y ago

Reminds me of the scifi story Manna, by Marshall Brain: http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm Looks like he was off by a year on the robotic revolution, and he got the wrong industry where it starts.

ivankirigin 17y ago
Manna is fun, but junk. What about wealth creation from robotics implies society would be enslaved? It makes no sense at any scale.
- jimbokun 17y ago
  How do you keep several billion people gainfully employed, with robots able to do so many tasks without supervision? It means we will need to change our economic systems to adapt to that reality. Otherwise, Manna might be the result. So, as sci-fi that makes you think, I find it useful.
  - blhack 17y ago
    THE PLOW IS GOING TO MAKE THE FARMER OBSOLETE!!! Okay, I'm kidding, of course, and I struggle with this all the time. I mean, if a factor that used to require 1000 people to build cars now only requires 100, or 50, or 1 or 0 or whatever, then what happened to the rest of the workers? They have moved on to auxiliary industries such as engineering (somebody needs to design the robots right). The endgame, however, will be the mechanized production of everything. At that point, energy will be the currency (instead of labor..think about it, paper money is just a unit of time*energy). If we can tap the near-limitless supplies of energy from fusion, we will have achieved a nearly Utopian Society.
    - donw 17y ago
      The issue is the transition; if you continue with our present economic model, as well as the prevailing cultural attitudes in the U.S., more and more workers will be marginalized, and if police and military forces can themselves be swapped out for robot counterparts, a revolution against 'The Man' becomes all but impossible. Of course, you can stop that from happening by creating 'comfortable enough' homeless shelters, and lacing the food with appropriate chemicals. The poor masses will be happy, fed, and clothed for a minimal amount of money, and can be quite easily swept under the rug. I don't think this is terribly far-fetched; culture in the U.S. seems to be highly focused on 'who has more', which is meaningless and self-destructive in a society that can readily satisfy the needs and wants of all of its inhabitants.

kkleiner 17y ago

Marshall has a lot more wrong than the year. I think his ideas are pretty ludicrous. He thinks that in the next decade or so robots will replace humans as construction workers. Does he have any idea how hard of a challenge that is? More likely is that robots will complement humans in construction, just as they are in warehousing, long before they completely replace humans.

mkull 17y ago

Does the Kiva system work with garments (hanging merchandise)?

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]

muunkky 17y ago

This opens up a whole world of resource allocation algorithms. Usually the logistical mathematics is limited by human-based constraints. It might be worthwhile to throw the book out on bin-packing and random access methods and try some new, fun linear algorithms from scratch!

jerf 17y ago

Article: "itch Rosenberg, VP of Marketing at KIVA, says that human workers are giving name tags and other identifying marks to their favorite robots. At some companies, “the robots” send you a birthday card each year. We have a hard time, it seems, avoiding anthropomorphizing and adopting robots as pets. And that’s okay. They may not be cute, but blue-collar bots are a working man’s best friend." Well, if it's a choice between anthropomorphizing and demonizing, and given human psychology it probably is precisely that choice, anthropomorphizing is the radically better choice. Cultures that demonize robotics will shortly find that supremely maladaptive. I've sort of worried about the demonizing undercurrent of American culture, but perhaps it will be shown merely a Hollywood-induced fad once the rubber hits the road and we all continue to deal with ever-more robots.

jamie 17y ago

"Founder and CEO Mick Mountz experienced the challenges of existing material handling systems firsthand while working at online grocer Webvan." I wonder how many other dotcom flameouts went on to rethink the expansiveness of their plans, and started solving individual problems that caused their failure. Clearly, webvan in 2009 would stand a better chance than webvan 1999.