posted in Technology
Walmart Running Into Trouble as Its Super-Expensive Robots Can’t Handle the Realities of Warehouse Work: It's an automation "arms race."
futurism.com/robots-and-machines/walmart-trouble-expensive-robots-warehouse
Replying to @eicker@lemmy.world
I work in this field and can speak to these systems.
These systems tend to perform quite well as their primary selling point is not necessarily cost reduction, flat, but rather increased revenue through higher and more reliable throughput. The trade off is that these systems are quite complex and normally require a great deal of coordination between the customer who may or may not operate the product and the OEM that builds and maintains it.
In my experience the biggest challenge is defining those responsibilities such that throughput is maintained. These systems are like high performance sports cars, they work well if taken care of and operated skillfully but can degrade faster as a result of lack of experience. Some of our customers permit us (the OEM) to operate and maintain to a greater extent then others. Given we have a greater deal of experience with the tool those customers tend to have measurably better performance.
To give an idea of why this particular industry has a harder time building the talent pool I’m referring to consider the domains that need to be covered.
Electromechanical systems, mobile robots, multi-robot systems, PLC programming, DCS, SCADA, multi-axis robots, VFDs, electrical power systems, relational databases, non-relational databases, message brokers, caching systems, distributed systems, Linux and Windows system administration, networking, industrial networking protocols (it’s different), software development, Kubernetes. This is the skill set of one technical professional in this space.
I commonly deal with issues that cover several of those areas simultaneously. E.g. robot communications are slowing down due to full message broker queue which is determined to be caused by a faulty motor causing slippage which leads to a large number of messaged being generated that fill the queue and cause other bots to begin making pathing errors due to communication timeouts.
Replying to @RumRunningDevil@lemmy.zip
So. The usual “Management trying to save a insignificant amount by making a stupid decision on a system they don’t understand for a job they don’t know”…
Replying to @Frenchgeek@lemmy.ml
Ummm, no?
The system is way more expensive than the workers were. By like, orders of magnitude. They buy it because you can basically 10x a warehouses throughput using it.
Don’t get me wrong, after accounting for increased throughput and the gains by automation you end up with a bigger margin than by having a swarm of workers in a dusty warehouse but it necessitates hiring a ton of technical professionals that you generally have to pay more. Additionally this whole space is really hard for AI to touch because it’s very cross domain and real time. For reference. My role is considered “entry level” and I get 6 figures.
All that being said this isn’t so much managers being idiots (though there’s plenty of that) so much as “our core competencies built from the ways we did warehouses before do not translate to how we do them now and friction is being generated as a result of that transition.”
There are technical issues with the system. It’s largely built to integrate with legacy industrial tech which ties it into the windows space, this has led to a lot of decisions about tooling that degrades performance and leads to memory leaks.
Replying to @RumRunningDevil@lemmy.zip
Sounds like they might be learning from their mistakes though? If so, they’re smarter than most businesses.
Replying to @mirshafie@europe.pub
The industry is still in its infancy, not just warehouse automation but robotics and fleetops in general.
There’s a lot of growing pains as we figure out the best ways to manipulate autonomous robot swarms that can number in the thousands.
One of the big issues is just training personnel for all this. It’s quite rare to find people with a background in both hardware and software and who can speak both fluently.
Replying to @RumRunningDevil@lemmy.zip
For reference. My role is considered “entry level” and I get 6 figures.
Please give me a job, thank you good sir or madam.
Replying to @LePoisson@lemmy.world
This is actually a good time to get into the space. There’s not a ton of companies competing over a now growing market and the work is weird enough that AI hasn’t fully eaten it.
Downside, see my other posts, the field wants to pull people who have a pretty diverse skill set. I would be prepared to discuss RAFT consensus in the same conversation as PID tuning and control theory.
Checkout companies like Symbotic, Boston Dynamics, or robotics integrators like ABB
Replying to @RumRunningDevil@lemmy.zip
Job sounds interesting. Several questions if u don’t mind me asking because I’m thinking to do small career change.
- What’s the job title I should look for?
- Do you think it’s possible to transfer from software developer? I have engineering background so I think I should be able to pick things up
- Is ageism real in your industry? I’m in 30s so ain’t young so worried about applying to entry level positions
Replying to @romanticremedy@lemmy.blahaj.zone
Unfortunately we don’t have standardized roles in this industry.
Jobs like these tend to touch one of a couple spaces.
- Controls engineering: PLC programming and traditional robotics
- Fleetops, application engineer, or operations engineer: I’ve seen these show up at places like Boston dynamics
- Technical support: look for ones that mention wanting like a EE and knowing stuff about control systems.
- SCADA engineer: Especially at tech startups.
In general you’re looking for jobs that reference a mixture of networking, control systems, SCADA, DCS, PLC, IT infra, and of course robotics.
My entire team is 30+, hard to find people with a diverse background that are also 22.