But I would guess, that is couple orders of magnitude easier than self driving for example.
You would guess wrong then. Robots don't handle variability well at all. Making a robot that can pack anything like a human can is a huge challenge.
You would guess wrong then. Robots don't handle variability well at all. Making a robot that can pack anything like a human can is a huge challenge.
The robotics part is more like "how do I make a robot that can pick up a pen, a 50kg weight, and a silk blouse, and make it put all three in the same package without messing up?" In a factory that would be three distinct robots because that variability in weight, size, surface friction, malleability, etc makes it a hard problem. In a warehouse it would need to be one robot. Even if you compromise and accept additional packaging like putting soft items in boxes or bags it's still quite difficult.
Though, frankly, Amazon often seems to do a terrible job of optimizing packing--both over and under. I'm guessing that within some range of the right size and some range of not having too much breakage, it's cheaper for them to half-ass it to some degree.