Headline, November 30 2024/ ''' ROBOTS -ROULETTE- ROBES* '''

''' ROBOTS 

-ROULETTE-

 ROBES* '''

AN ESSAY - EASY. BUT PICKING FROM A PILE? Warehouses find robots struggling to master skills that are simple for humans.

In the outbound dock of an Amazon warehouse near Nashville, a robotic arm named Cardinal on a recent day stacked packages, Tetris-style into carts. Then Proteus, an autonomous platform, moved the carts to the loading bay, flashing electronic eyes designed to make the robot more appealing to human colleagues.

As robots become more capable, they are performing an increasing number of tasks in warehouses and delivery centers with varying degrees of aptitude and speed.

Machines can load and unload trucks. They can place goods on pallets and take them off. Robots can shift items around in inventory, pickup packages and move goods on warehouse floors. And they can do all this without a human minder guiding their every move.

Yet, even though robots are starting to take over some repetitive and cumbersome jobs, there are still many tasks they are not good at, making it difficult to know when or if robots will be able to fully automate the industry.

Despite the rise in automation, warehouses remain big employers of humans. U.S. data shows that nearly 1.8 million people work in this corner of the supply chain. While that number is down 9% from its peak in 2022, when logistic companies went on a hiring spree to handle the pandemic e-commerce boom, it is still up more than 30% since early 2020.

There are many crucial, simple tasks that humans are far better at. They can reach into a container of many items and move some out of the way to extract the piece they want, a task industry officials refer to as picking.

Robotics engineers struggle to say when their creations will be able to do that fast enough to be viable replacements for human workers.

Artificial intelligence companies like OpenAI have served up impressive services that can quickly produce writing, images and videos that can seem to be the work of skilled professionals.

But in warehouses brimming with the wares of the modern economy, advances in automation have been slower. There, robots often struggle to master skills most humans can do without much trouble.

Sparrow, one of Amazon's most advanced robotic arms, performs '' top picking,'' taking the item at or near the top of a container. Amazon says Sparrow can manipulate over 200 million items of different sizes and weights, but that is not adept at ''targeted picking'' - rummaging around many items to get one that might be buried or obscured.

'' That's a really hard job,'' said Tye Brady, chief technologist at Amazon Robotics. '' I'm not saying it's impossible. That's kind of the next frontier.''

And sometimes companies find that the robots put through tests outside the lab are not ready.

There are '' more that we have not adopted than ones we have,'' said Sally Miller, the global chief information officer in DHL Supply Chain, referring to robots. The DHL division she works for operates warehouses for other companies and has deployed 7,000 robots globally.

Among the rejected : an autonomous forklift capable of stacking boxes at heights that DHL, which is based in Bonn, Germany, decided was too slow.

Ms. Miller said she was frustrated to see venture capital recently rushing into robots that resemble people, a category of machines known as humanoid. Such machines have long been the robotic holy grail in science fiction and in the visions of some technology executives.

But to Ms. Miller, they aren't ready for warehouse work, and she would prefer that engineers develop devices that can handle specific tasks well, quickly and affordably.

The Honour and Serving of the Latest Global Operational Research on Robots, capabilities and the future, continues. The World Students Society thanks Peter Eaves.

With most respectful dedication to the Global Founder Framers of !WOW! - the exclusive and eternal ownership of every student in the world, and then Students, Professors and Teachers.

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