AI holds considerable promise in creating robots capable of much better performance. Instead of following a routine blindly, an AI-powered machine can perceive, learn what lies ahead, and try to respond intelligently. One day, intelligent robots may be able to pick up a foreign object or solve a problem without human help intuitively.
Warehouses in particular are seeing an unprecedented increase in automation, Matt Beane, an assistant professor at UC Santa Barbara who studies the adoption and use of advanced robotics. Worldwide sales of “professional service robots” are up 41% in 2020, according to recent data from International Federation of Robots, while the amount spent on that category increased 14% – implying that the technology is slowly getting cheaper. Sales of robotic weapons in the US alone grew 37% year-over-year in the first nine months of 2021, according to Progressive Automation Association, with warehouse deliveries now on par with car production.
But Beane also notes that much of this increase has to do with technology that’s been around for decades, like simple sorting systems, or stupid industrial robots, like Amazon’s current fleet, that obey rules. repetitive actions without adaptation.
Only a small percentage of implementations use real AI, such as a robot that explains how to grasp a foreign object, says Beane. Currently, robots can select a limited number of items from trash cans or conveyor belts or navigate around buildings, he said, but they can’t enter for people performing complex operations. and tends to fail when something goes wrong.
“I don’t know of a single person who lost his job to some AI-powered robot,” he said. “That’s not to say it hasn’t happened, but it’s too rare and too experimental.”
Amazon’s competitors are rushing to adopt more automation as they try to keep up, and investors are pouring large sums of money into startups working on warehouse robots. Eg, Berkshire Grey, a Massachusetts company that sells custom robotic automation to a number of retailers and fulfillment companies, raised a total of $413 million ahead of its listing through a SPAC deal in February of this year. Follow a report from PitchBook.
It’s unclear how the use of conventional robots has impacted the workforce at Amazon or elsewhere. Tasks like picking and packing products often still require human ingenuity and intelligence, and Amazon says it will hire more than 150,000 seasonal workers to help deal with the spike in orders. Then again, the company might need even more workers without robots.
More robots could help fill short-term labor shortages, but it could ultimately mean eliminating certain jobs. Some from research that the adoption of robotics in the US economy since 1990 has resulted in fewer jobs and lower wages.
Automation Country
Amazon isn’t alone in applying automation to categorize packages and products, even as some of its competitors are dodging the coolest robots.
Last November, Walmart decided to stop using a robot that roams stores counting inventory on shelves, claiming it offers no improvement over human labor. But this July, retailers offers a package handling project involving robotic automation developed in collaboration with a company called Symbotic. The system was developed involving custom-built machinery to remove boxes from pallets before sorting and routing them through the Walmart facility. The system replaces some human labor, but it only needs limited machine intelligence.
