Boston Dynamics’ Stretch robot can move 800 heavy boxes per hour
spectrum.ieee.org
spectrum.ieee.org
https://www.bastiansolutions.com/assets/1/6/ultra_cutsheet_3...
I work in a different division, so I can't really speak to how this was developed. But, it's interesting to see the different design decisions, particularly the decisions to integrate or not integrate conveyor with the robot itself.
Our robot is much larger due to the integrated conveyor, but from what I understand this simplifies navigation. We remain stationary on the outside of the trailer, so we sidestep the problem of navigating in an arbitrary trailer. This is a big challenge according to some of the AGV vendors I've spoken to. Maybe it comes down to mapping techniques - not my area.
The most difficult thing about this problem is mixed size boxes. Knowing where every box is is easy when they're all the same dimension and stacked neatly, but what about when they're packed randomly, many boxes are askew, and they're all different sizes? Then you need to get into complicated time-of-flight sensors, point clouds, surface/box recognition logic/AI, etc..
Of course, the reason we were re-stacking pallets is because our original managers were so bad at managing inventory that the 20ish backstock carts were full, so we would routinely have 15-25 pallets of backstock in the warehouse... when ideally the carts should only ever be half full. Saved their jobs when I took the order gun from them, lol.
To unload you most reverse the process. Unless it gets busy then you just pull the whole wall down at one time and bulldoze the boxes onto the rollers.
Restacking pallets in warehouses is way harder. It’s more like building a house of cards but no card is the same size.
I think this is actually a basic rule in packing / loading. Get the big things in first and then work around them with the small things. It's how I load my car when going on a big trip. The main exception is things that you will need quickly without having to unload everything.
'Big things first' is also why mixtures (e.g. muesli) settle in transit with the larger pieces at the top and dust at the bottom. Small things can work their way under the big things but the converse isn't true, unless the whole volume is vigorously shaken.
I really do think the same could be applied to shipping packaging.
There are 12 sized boxes and that's that. They need to be stacked a certain way.
Or maybe a bit of flex here and there for some things.
Nobody really has the wherewithal or power to do that, but you know ... Xi could. I can see that being something China imposes, and then it's a standard that naturally gets exported.
Obviously for distribution of stock you could probably be smarter about it and waste less space/cardboard since you've probably got lots of each size of item.
For end-consumer shipping, they should frankly have boxes that 'fit' perfectly.
Amazon should have a 'box maker machine' that makes all the dam boxes on the spot as needed from cardboard.
Or forget boxes, how about a really light mesh?
The work Amazon has done to change box types, switch to bags, etc., has reduced waste considerably per package, though I suspect the absolute amount of waste has continued to increase with business growth.
[0] - approx 90 in Japan in 2016 - https://dailyportalz.jp/kiji/170303198940 (thought that was fun, submitted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29746745)
On the other hand, this sort of highly incremental "replace a human, warehouse stays the same" automation is in a weird way lower risk. Sure, the robot is hard to get right and might not work well, but you can try it out without reconfiguring the rest of your warehouse. Firms not really being pressed on labor costs, might still more "leisurly" want to to automated. They would do this less because profitability demands it, than because they are curiousn about either raising profits or cutting costs to induce more demand. (And indeed, one suspects the demand for most do-hickies amazon fullfills is highly elastic. Such "experiments" need to more low risk than high reward, and with this sort of automation, Boston dynamics doing the fancy pants robotics work absorbs all their risk. Perfect!
For the type of automation PP is talking about, in contrast t oI would encourage one to read https://homesignalblog.wordpress.com/2020/12/25/industrial-s...
If we really wanted to be as efficient possible, things would have gone very differently:
- We would still be using way more rail, and industry would be clustered around that rail minimizing trip distances,
- We would apply the simple logic of containerization at multiple levels, creating smaller countainers to fit inside larger containers
- Railway switching yards would have tons of simple af crude pnumatic push and pulls, shuffling the fixed-sized boxes between containers.
This is something like the Factorio model. We probably could have done this with 1980s-level internet, barcodes, etc. Or at least 1980s tech with 1990s cheaper prices and more advanced supply chains.
A lot of people "oh, it's harder than it looks, etc. etc." I dunno. I really don't believe it: the hard parts here are mainly getting people to coordinate on the standards, label things properly, etc. Lack of complete monopolies makes that very difficult.
I think we simply don't do these things long ago not because we can't but because such coordination and physical investment-heavy automation is expensive for firms, and they only do it "on demand" when there are labor market issues. The more we automate, the weaker and cheaper labor gets, and the weaker and cheaper labor gets in a consumer economy the more sluggish everything gets as there are aggregate demand issues. Together this means we stop automating way before our technological potential.
This, to me, is the most exciting part about UBI + shrinking the work week. Make labor scarse. Make aggregate demand strong and extremely reliable. Then automating finally makes economic sense, and for shear glory (and more leisure :)) we can engineer unbridled.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssZ_8cqfBlE
It let them do a few novel things I think, most obvious is the dense packing grid, no need for humans to get around the area so they really pack in the functional units. Next is the precision they can pull off without having to worry about wiggle-room or interruptions from people, the robots move very close to eachother which would be a big no-no if you had to worry about people.
The demonstrated speed is awful, which is alright in theory since you can just run more of them in parallel, but it does pose an issue if it's added to a facility that is running near capacity and can't put more trailers on doors.
50 lb limit is below state of the art (humans), but some companies have that as a limit. It's ok.
The real deal breaker is that it seems to be designed solely for cube volume, and not just any cubes, perfectly regular cubes. The demo videos also seem to be very light stuff (10-20 lbs?) and have a lot of impermeable surface like tape, I'd guess that 50 lbs is only doable under very good circumstances. Maybe even dusty boxes would be a problem.
edit: 40-50lbs is plenty for cardboard cubes to warp, flex, start breaking apart, etc depending on the contents. This happens even with a human holding onto opposite corners, relying on a single flat surface just isn't very robust.
I think grip is the big problem. When a robot can reliably toss poly bags, strapped printer paper boxes, and tubes, it's going to get a lot of use. I've seen that sort of stuff for smaller things, but it seems to be extremely hard to scale up to heavier weights.
It's a bit funny, but this is probably 5x as useful in reverse, loading trailers and pallets.
To hit 4.5 seconds cycle time on average, this thing is going to be cranking. I wonder what the centripetal acceleration required from the outside of the box is to let the arm complete its rotation in ~2 seconds is. That’s 180° of motion, with a start and stop ramp. Maybe I’d give them 3 seconds loaded if they can achieve 1.5 seconds unloaded. Will have to wait til after dinner to work it out, but it seems not a trivial force.
This is fine for domestic loads, but anything coming out of a container (or going in one, depending on the destination) is probably going to be stuffed for transport efficiency (or best case, slip sheeted).
Palletised contained loads are rare in my experience due to the space efficiency loss (particularly at the moment with current freight rates). Even slip sheeting generally leads to shipping too much fresh air.
6% to 9% is on the low end - I would estimate the difference is closer to 20%. It’s at least 10cm per pallet, and assuming they are double stacked, with 10cm left on top for loading, that would be 30cm of the 2.5m height which is already 12% of the container fill before you even consider the space between pallets and all pallet heights not being at the absolute maximum allowable. It takes about 8 hours to unstuff a container by hand, so you can quite easily work out the trade off against shipment costs depending on your freight costs.
(My day job is a logistics consultant)
One advantage of Lindo is that it has a version that lets us integrate the solver into an excel spreadsheet, which helps us share the model with clients and makes it easier to explain to them (and let's them see the workings, as it's built in a tool that the client already knows how to use).
At least that's what we hope with our new process soon up and running.. If anything, the new automation process is much simpler at least, there are sooo much that can go wrong with big robot arms. They look cool, though, great for recruiting.
Ones I have seen were always mounted in place.
If this one can drive around as I understand -"omnidirectional mobile base"- with a box it is different game from my point of view.
This is pretty underrated, IMO. There are some good examples of Robots being outdated by simpler processes: e.g. the new process for building Teslas is vastly simpler than having so many precisely calibrated giant robots joining different parts.
Discussing the frame / body construction on the model y.
“‘When we get the big casting machine, it’ll go from 70 parts to 1 with a significant reduction in capital expenditure on all the robots to put those parts together.’”
So it’s a training opportunity for the workforce to earn slightly more per hour and open up new job opportunities with the same margins.
Also consider they are foreseeing a world with fewer accidents, specifically accidents with Teslas.
Reminds me of a Tom Scott video where he checks out the Ocado warehouse in the UK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssZ_8cqfBlE
It's crazy; they've rethought the entire system to have it navigable by machine.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-hampshire-58190969
Also... As as exercise for the reader, compare the Ocado top-down picker with the Kiva (now Amazon) bottom-up shelf lifter, and then guess which system has a better value-for-money and is faster to deploy.
From Article linked by parent:
> A Hampshire Fire and Rescue Authority report found there was an hour's delay in dialling 999 and staff had turned off the sprinkler system.
Whereas Tom Scott was at this location: https://goo.gl/maps/H54SKTkumd4dEyam6 (the same outside view of the location is at 0:03 in the video linked above).
Based on the timeline of events, they basically copied AutoStore. I'm actually curious what the next lawsuits will bring, but i don't think it's going to be in favor for Ocado.
There was already a preliminary result and while Ocado says it's a win, i think that's a deceiving statement if you actually care to read it.
> The Norwegian company claimed in U.S. filings that Ocado infringed four patents for the robotic systems. The judge found that, while Ocado used technology covered by three of the patents, those claims failed to fulfill requirements of clearly describing the invention in a way that others can understand.
We'll see how it goes.
This temporarily one for an injunction did conclude that Ocado is using 3/4 patents. But the injuction was not granted.
Note: not an expert, but I'll probably ask one in patent law for more information to one to check if I'm correct. Because I have some stocks in AutoStore and that included rudimentary analysis of AutoStore vs. Ocado lawsuits without going deep into the actual patents.
There's a lot of waste there: it would be more efficient to just feed people from centralized canteens located near living and work spaces. The problem is that you have sales taxes and tips to add to those kind of meals, plus the wastage of inconsistent demand for the restaurant generally and for individual menu items.
I believe the term "advertorial" applies pretty well here.
It's a big key to Elon Musk's success imo. See: all of Musk's hype plans that are really infeasible (e.g. hyperloop). The only plausible customers are governments yet somehow he's still managing to land incredible contracts for plans that are all hype
* tactically unacceptable noise
* short range before being refuelled
* not as autonomous as advertised
* Increased maintenance / oil leakages.
These issues of course won't be such a problem in the warehouse environment but I'd be keen to see an independent assessment of the thing's utility.
* in a factory the boxes can be changed to suit the robot (limited by how automated the box loading and top sealing is). If the boxes need changing then it makes selling the robot far more difficult.
* in a factory the contents are of a predictable weight, and the boxes are predictable sizes
* in a factory the loads are not mixed
* the factory doesn’t palletise their boxes
Is there a marketplace where you can bet against the success of an individual product? Although given than most products fail, then either (a) the odds are poor e.g. win 10% more than your stake, or (b) you pay out huge amounts if the product succeeds (similar to how you can lose a lot of money shorting a stock).
They talk about a fence around the robot, which is only viable if the robot needs help very rarely. If the robot needs help a lot (boxes over 23kg, boxes of unsupported sizes like TVs) safety issues would quickly arise, and liability kills the product.
While my shop doesn't do a huge amount of shipping and is not a big shipper, and most boxes can tolerate it, I can definitely think of both outgoing and incoming boxes I wouldn't want to see picked up by the top... .
The answer is "no, not all boxes, but yes some boxes".
Heavy boxes still needed support from the bottom.
As with any robotics project, there are a lot of ways that this might fail, but my money is not on boxes being too heavy or flimsy.
suction on the side or top isn't really any different from a human packer grabbing it with a hand on each side. heavier things that really need bottom support would usually be shipped on pallets.
That certainly explains the sad state of a couple of heavy packages I've received recently after clearly making similar assumptions and being mishandled in shipping.
At least every 30 minutes someone would pickup a box of yogourt/orange juice/whatever and the bottom would fall out and they would wear the contents.
Boxes are NOT usually designed to be pickup up from above.
It seems the pressure to generate sales is forcing them to produce more down to earth products that can be marketed easily.
It was large, powerful (800kg max moved mass), and it killed few bits of industrial machinery before we patched in enough interlocks.
1) Diligence, care, time, and luck on the part of the loader, carefully stacking boxes in such a way to make sure there isn't any room for the boxes to shift in transit or fall over when unloading.
2) Just throw it all in a big pile and hope nothing breaks.
Both are roughly equally common.
The actual robotics part is definitely deep learning though.
Why? Moving machine arms smoothly has been a thing for a long time.
And I would argue that whilst the machine learning way is pretty complex it's still simpler than 3d motion planning of moving robot platforms. And one machine learning solution can adapt to many robots with just retraining, without redoing the formulas from scratch.
* technically on a moving robot platform it hasn't entirely been solved, but good enough solutions do exist.
> And I would argue that whilst the machine learning way is pretty complex it's still simpler than 3d motion planning of moving robot platforms.
On what grounds do you think this? 3d motion planning isn't complex in these scenarios.
> And one machine learning solution can adapt to many robots with just retraining, without redoing the formulas from scratch.
You don't redo the formulas from scratch, you just plug in the specs of the robot and then you have it. Positioning and moving arm parts is a solved problem. Redoing machine learning for every arm seems much more cumbersome.
Here's an entire automated distribution center.[2] This is more traditional automation. Pallets come in, are broken apart, and items put into storage. Then items are assembled to fill orders, and stacked on pallets. They even call it "automated Tetris". They try to stack the items to match a retail store's planogram, so the people doing shelf restocking usually have what they need next on top. Objects are lifted from the bottom, or sometimes grabbed from two sides, so they don't rely on super-strong cardboard.
The forklifts that empty and fill trucks with pallets are still human-driven in that system. Automated forklifts do exist.[3] They're still rare, though.
All this gear seems to come from more advanced countries that don't have an underclass for cheap labor. New Zealand, Germany, the Scandinavian countries.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMtH19n3CzE
A Fordism for the 21st century.
The challenge came when the forklift operator failed to show on time. I would have to use a pallet jack to move the full pallet so I could start stacking the next (it wasn't worth the extra movement to carry the boxes to a farther pallet). There was a conveyor that could buffer about half a pallet worth of boxes. I then worked double-time to catch up.
This would be a perfect application for this robot if the cost aligns. I assume as these robots come down in price these kinds of jobs will disappear.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlL_rsmcRMZd4EgwMU5kHy_pr...
Seems like Boston Dynamics' MO: Flashy demos, YouTube videos, great R&D, lots of PR, but light on the customer testimonials.
That sounds really stressful for that one person. Great when everything runs smoothly, but the moment something breaks down you might easily get overwhelmed, unless there are more workers on-site that can be pulled in from other tasks.
Cool technology, though. Anything that reduces the necessity of people to work unpleasant jobs seems like generally a good thing.
The problem there though is that companies like FedEx and UPS employ a lot of college students. Historically a part time handler position, at least here in Indiana, pays 2-3x minimum wage with sort operations frequently at night allowing people to work part time and make a nice chunk of change while going to school during the day. I'd say in Indy 60% of my high school class worked as a handler for FedEx at some point in the first few years after turning 18 because of that.
Sure, it's going to save a lot of wear and tear on people's bodies but when minimum wage is $7.25 and a package handler here in central Indiana will start around $18.45 part time... sometimes people are willing to bust their butts for one reason or another.
The Stretch robot (shown in the article) can't unload a truck. It's not designed to lift itself up and enter a truck. Although, the other robots from BD (shown in the dancing video) might be able to do so.
Obviously wouldn't work OOTB, but definitely seems doable in some niche truck modifications (and likely little-to-no Stretch modifications).
No business wouldn't want to increase their total productivity.
GP is correct. 1 supervisor + 8 robots replaces 8 people.
For it or against it, when people talk about robots replacing labor, this is exactly what they are talking about.
Our hope, at least mine, is that we remove drudgery and difficulty from people's lives and create new jobs to replace the ones that are lost.
That all changes when we get what I call Moravec Class robots, though: those that overcome Moravec's Paradox.
The perimeter of a building is limited, with the number of docks growing as the square root of the floorspace. All else being equal, your I/O scales worse than your interior production capacity. This is one of the limits on the maximum size of a facility. Speeding up I/O flow is really good because you can’t parallelize it as much as other work.
This robot is not super fast, but (assuming it works well) it is relentless. They'll get faster and better.