Walmart Running Into Trouble as Its Super-Expensive Robots Can’t Handle the Realities of Warehouse Work: It's an automation "arms race."

Robots are more expensive and are less capable than people? What a surprise! Not. I saw that coming years ago… 🙄

Unfortunately the robots are substantially faster and more effective than humans. Can you run at ~45 mph?

The issue is complexity and that’s something that’s getting better over time.

My stand up Jack can go just as fast. The problem isn’t top speed, it’s acceleration and breaking. It’s being able to rip around a warehouse building orders quickly and efficiently. A dude with a stand up Jack and a voxcoder can beat most robots.

The company this post is referring to doesn’t have bots moving around a warehouse designed for humans. They built a whole building with shelves and space designed for the robots.

I promise you, the throughout is tremendously higher than humans alone. The bots can get up to roughly 45mph in a few seconds and break to a full stop in the same amount of time. I know this because I work in this space, the system is fast

And it actually works? They can’t even figure out how to make vending machines that don’t cause a log-jam.

I work for warehouse automation too. It absolutely works. Its just very carefully, meticulously planned. Every tiny edge case is accounted for. Hell. We measure the floor for difference in height to the mm where 3 is a big issue.

Thats kind of the whole problem with robots as tools. They can be incredibly fast and precise but if something is just slightly out of expected alignment they tear themselves apart (or kill someone nearby).