For those of you who don't work in the warehouse logistics space ProMat, which is to warehouses as CES is to home gadgets, is coming up in a couple of weeks so expect lots of warehouse robotics companies to continue making announcements.
The roboticization of manufacturing is mostly finished since factories work with identical outpus SKUs every time. Warehouses tend to have to handle a lot of different SKU but in a fairly regular way meaning that they're an environment that's pretty much ripe for robots to be entering just now. Goods to picker systems (like Kiva) have really taken off allowing robotic pickers like the one sold by us a nice ecological niche to fill. There are also companies with robotic forklifts and all sorts of other things.
I'm not entirely certain that the role these bots are performing wouldn't be better served by a large stationary robotic arm, as some other companies are working on now. It might very well be the best solution for unloading trucks?
On the stationary arm question it is a question of warehouse logistics. Warehouses are cheap (essentially a simple box over a concrete pad) and they they get reconfigured all the time. A robot that can set up where ever you have dropped a bunch of metal shelving, and then move to a new place, keeps your operational costs down.
“The roboticization of manufacturing is mostly finished“ -huh? 95% of the factories I go to don’t have the stuff at Promat. I was just at a UR beginner training class with engineers from fortune 50 companies. The robotic tools out there cover a vast majority of the processes but pricing, integration, and reusability still leave some huge holes in the market.
>I'm not entirely certain that the role these bots are performing wouldn't be better served by a large stationary robotic arm
This was my reaction, though I suppose it's a capability-demonstration video. Would think in unloading, you'd want something heavier to unload full pallets/carts etc.
Possibly, they'd be useful for rare-item box picking in DC's, where the runs are long enough and infrequent enough that it's costly to carry a full shelf (slower transit speed, plus need for return trip)? Or maybe it's just a capabilities demonstration and the market caught on to the whole search and rescue thing [0].
From what I have been seeing from an industry that is ancillary to warehouse robotics needs (LIDAR sensor apparatus for UAVs and drone purposes), high resolution/high-performance small LIDAR are coming down a lot in cost now. And there are a number of new small machine vision startups selling LIDAR units for these sorts of purposes.
Those boxes are all the same size - Tetris on easy mode.
Pickle Robot is also working on this but with a fixed base and support for random box sizes/weights. We’ve just started scratching the surface of palletizing/loading with reinforcement learning.
If you are excited to come solve robotic box handling ping me! aj at picklerobot.com
I did a tour of the Cabot cheese factory in Vermont, and they have a fixed arm palletizing cheese wheel cartons. It looked a lot more reliable than these robots and seemed to have fewer moving parts.
Two wheeled dynamically balanced warehouse robot like that is completely unnecessary complication.
Boston Dynamics is developing amazing tech but they are demoing robots for tasks that are better with 4 wheels. Dynamically balanced walkers inside are niche application.
Smarter robot hands and 4-wheeled robot movers are where the markets and money is. Boston dynamics may be moving towards that direction but they still like to show the cools stuff they can't find markets for.
Whenever I see these Boston Dynamics video's I have many unanswered questions about the underlying control systems.
This one for example has an organic birdlike head motion. Is that pre-programmed or a natural outcome of their control system dynamics. The MIT technologyreview page says "Each one is created with carefully pre-programmed movements and will take many, many takes to get right before it’s shared."
So is it a sequence of individual actions: align to pallet using registration cards -> move forward with reaching distance -> detect box position -> use box picking algorithm to pick box -> backup fixed precalculated distance -> turn 90 degrees -> move forward to destination etc. This would be a brittle solution that has to be reprogrammed for the next task.
Or is it a more general closed loop solution: Theres a pile of boxes there. Move it here. Use your sensors to plan a trajectory and sequence of actions to accomplish the goal.
I don't know much about control, but apparently Emanuel Todorov knows about the basics of Boston Dynamics control in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7enj1FGoYwg around 14 minutes. The paper is this one https://repository.upenn.edu/ese_papers/686/. I don't understand most of it, but it may help if you have some knowledge. But from the few things I understood, not much is programmed.
Also, I'm watching some lectures for a MIT underactuated robotics class (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeEqtTgDXFc). The professor says in one of the videos that the people who end up creating Boston Dynamics also took that course. From what I watched until now, nothing is explicitly programmed (by some vague definition of "explicitly programmed"), you just find some inputs that makes the dynamics of the model behave the way you want.
Almost certainly the birdlike movement is the outcome of the robot dynamics, and not some hardcoded rules. But things like avoiding hitting obstacles or estimating the distance, I think that needs to be explicitly programmed (and then used as input to the model such as "move the end effector to that position").
I have no doubt that organic motion was deliberately designed that way to impress their intended audience.
Yes, it makes sense to mimic nature sometimes. But when it comes to robotic manipulators, loaders, etc - there's absolutely no reason to copy biological systems limited by strength, speed, or joint mobility. They seem to be deliberately going for that uncanny valley effect.
Eventually, someone is going to admit it. Until then, this is hugely entertaining.
This robot looks unpredictable and dangerous for any worker that would be in the area. Other point: as a unicycle rider, I would suggest this robot to wear a helmet.
It's absolutely insane to me that this thing works with suction caps and isn't designed to actually pick up the boxes by supporting the weight from the bottom. That would seem like such a basic requirement for any boxes with relatively heavy payloads.
I would think the boxes have to be spec'd to contain the suspended weight of whatever is inside them anyway. I doubt they can depend on always being supported from the bottom throughout the whole delivery chain.
It doesn't seem difficult to add a small forklift as "arms" to support the bottom after it has been lifted up a little. Even a person would have to get the box up an inch before supporting the bottom.
I have spent far too much of my life in a warehouse doing this robot's job. A job that according to every pundit from the "smart" to the stupid was supposed to be gone tomorrow. Mostly I'm just disappointed in how clownish all those futurists look.
Completely retooling the society after 70 years of postwar infrastructure is going to take more than anyone would willingly sacrifice. You would have to bomb everything more than a few years old flat. At no point will it be feasible to keep leaving major investment in business and industry tied to the promises of modernizing through bleeding edge technology. The world is so vast and involves such a colossal distribution of existing resources. So many of the systems here are only functioning through broad and cheap standards, like containers, rail gauges, ship sizes.
I don't want my job. I want a machine built to put me out of it for good. I have been saying that along with a generation of workers told robots were coming for their jobs since the day i was hired. That was fifteen years ago.
We need a Manhattan project for the basic tools of industry. Now. There are thousands of novel or unproven methods of doing the most basic forms of labor our economy is based on, and we are leaving the creation of things that need to be ISO standard across the surface of the earth in order to succeed to entrepreneurs and startups and scholastic vanity.
The modern technological landscape across all disciplines looks terrifyingly similar to the cambrian explosion, which produced so many things, at such a cost of living suffering, that did not survive what came after. I'm afraid our civilization might have run out of low-hanging fruit.
To me that is the line of demarcation between the "developed world" and whatever precedes it. I don't think what is beyond that is peaceful. It necessarily undermines the infrastructure the whole society is founded on.
AS/RS systems have been making steady inroads into warehouses despite the lack of bombing runs and those require a lot of disruption. The rolly bots Boston Dynamics is trying to put forward don't really seem to require any infrastructure replacement at all. I really think this is an area where ad hoc experimentation is working and we'd be mistaken to try to create a single standard without trying everything first.
I don't think Warehouse Robotics in ambient are of anything urgent. There are still plenty of affordable labours and tools to help with lifting. Warehouse Robotics in Cold Storage is an entirely different scenario, no one wants to go into the freezer even when you have full suits and helping machinery. The constant changing of temperature from -20C ( -4F ) to 3C ( ~40F) over a long period of time causes all sort of damage to your body. And it is increasingly hard to find anyone willing to work in these environment even when substantial premium are paid.
I am still baffled as to why Cold Storage today is still not fully automated.
My guess is that [1] 4 wheels don't solve the fundamental problem of lifting - counterweights (unless your 4-wheel "platform" is so wide to not easily fit / maneuvre in the warehouse), and [2] 2 weels are enough - with modern motors, microcontrolers and feedback algorithms, 2-wheel platforms (think Segway) are perfectly stable.
Handle is a robot that combines the rough-terrain capability of legs with the efficiency of wheels. It uses many of the same principles for dynamics, balance, and mobile manipulation found in the quadruped and biped robots we build, but with only 10 actuated joints, it is significantly less complex. Wheels are fast and efficient on flat surfaces while legs can go almost anywhere: by combining wheels and legs, Handle has the best of both worlds.
Handle can pick up heavy loads while occupying a small footprint, allowing it to maneuver in tight spaces. All of Handle’s joints are coordinated to deliver high-performance mobile manipulation.
I'm no robotics engineer, but to me the design looks brilliant. I suspect that the biggest problem with a machine that needs to pick up and carry objects in a somewhat humanoid fashion is going to be weight and balance. They've attacked the problem by making the entire body of the robot a seesaw and adjustable counterweight to control the balance. Having the robot on two wheels also gives the robot a smaller footprint, gives it a zero turn radius, simplifies how you control turning, and probably also simplifies the navigation control algorithms.
You are imagining a robot by looking at the application demonstrated in the video. Boston Dynamics is not building robots that can just move boxes. This is just a predecessor to something bigger that can do different things, almost like a human.
A robot like this, able to move on 2 wheels, could be quite versatile for combat in tight spaces. Giving it a 4 wheel bogey like on an iBot, with the ability for the bogey to fully rotate, would also enable stair climbing.
The single manipulator could be mounted with a gun/bayonet, which could also be turned around to provide a surface for a door breaching ram. The thought of such a thing is pretty terrifying.
Nice. It's fast enough to be useful. It's all electric - the hydraulic systems are gone.
Palletizing is a routine robot task.[1][2] This is just palletizing with a mobile base. Now Boston Dynamics has to compete on price with the twenty or so other companies that do palletizing. If this turns out to be cost effective, Kuka will probably do it, too.
I don't think these types of robots will ever get smart as humans and que terminator music... i think rather companies like https://www.neuralink.com will start doing surgery on human brains and slowly humans will become more and more cyborgs until at some point... yes, a human with a human brain will have all these artifical parts and 1/2 his/her brain now a robot etc. And maybe that "person" will lose track of which side they are on in the human vs robot war?
Or they'll get in influenced by anybody having access to the parts software and will subtly lose free will and never notice they did.
But of course the part makers will say they are super secure and will have a PR making them look like as legit as google or amazon today. Because it's convenient, people will do it, considering the warnings comming from tin foil conspirationists.
Soon society will expect the level of productivity those parts give you, and most public and private services will assume this interface so the people not doing it will be more and more excluded from the regular system.
There's something I don't understand, perhaps someone knows and can explain.
Why have the chosen to build it with only two wheels? It's clearly unstable and has to constantly adjust it's position and counterweight to stay balanced. Sure, it's super clever and I think it looks amazing. But surely it would have been far cheaper and easier to build it with three of four wheels so it naturally stable. It would have looked less cool, but I feel like that can't be the only reason.
I think the idea might be to have them for different kinds of works. We might be seeing 0.1% of the work these robots (this particular design) will actually do.
It looks like the warehouse needs to be redesigned not just the robots inside it. Warehouse lighting is likely unnecessary, heat can be reduced, sensors everywhere... its now a machine environment. The floor markers, etc should all be part of that environment. Build the environment to the automated worker and you'll get a more effective result. I think Amazon has gone this route already.
Would like something like that for masonry.I wish some more robotics and automation for house/roads construction. Is anyone working actively in that area? I have some interesting ideas how and what can be done to reduce total construction costs a bit.
I had the opposite thought: that they are designing their robots strictly for function and letting the form follow.
To be sure they are "cleaned up" but the way the counterbalance is slung underneath, and "Wheeler"-like ("Return to Oz" reference) mobility, single arm with some kind of suction gripper .... it screams utility.
What I'd like to know about this thing - how would you program it for what to do in a real warehouse environment? I would expect that many real warehouses have plenty of small differences in what needs to be done day to day. It's easy to tell a person to do something a little differently. How tough would it be to tell this robot to do it, and to make sure that it actually does it right?
[+] [-] Symmetry|7 years ago|reply
The roboticization of manufacturing is mostly finished since factories work with identical outpus SKUs every time. Warehouses tend to have to handle a lot of different SKU but in a fairly regular way meaning that they're an environment that's pretty much ripe for robots to be entering just now. Goods to picker systems (like Kiva) have really taken off allowing robotic pickers like the one sold by us a nice ecological niche to fill. There are also companies with robotic forklifts and all sorts of other things.
I'm not entirely certain that the role these bots are performing wouldn't be better served by a large stationary robotic arm, as some other companies are working on now. It might very well be the best solution for unloading trucks?
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danvoell|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] perpetualpatzer|7 years ago|reply
This was my reaction, though I suppose it's a capability-demonstration video. Would think in unloading, you'd want something heavier to unload full pallets/carts etc.
Possibly, they'd be useful for rare-item box picking in DC's, where the runs are long enough and infrequent enough that it's costly to carry a full shelf (slower transit speed, plus need for return trip)? Or maybe it's just a capabilities demonstration and the market caught on to the whole search and rescue thing [0].
[0] https://www.xkcd.com/2128/
[+] [-] walrus01|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] poslathian|7 years ago|reply
Pickle Robot is also working on this but with a fixed base and support for random box sizes/weights. We’ve just started scratching the surface of palletizing/loading with reinforcement learning.
If you are excited to come solve robotic box handling ping me! aj at picklerobot.com
[+] [-] Spooky23|7 years ago|reply
I did a tour of the Cabot cheese factory in Vermont, and they have a fixed arm palletizing cheese wheel cartons. It looked a lot more reliable than these robots and seemed to have fewer moving parts.
[+] [-] nabla9|7 years ago|reply
Boston Dynamics is developing amazing tech but they are demoing robots for tasks that are better with 4 wheels. Dynamically balanced walkers inside are niche application.
Smarter robot hands and 4-wheeled robot movers are where the markets and money is. Boston dynamics may be moving towards that direction but they still like to show the cools stuff they can't find markets for.
[+] [-] AareyBaba|7 years ago|reply
This one for example has an organic birdlike head motion. Is that pre-programmed or a natural outcome of their control system dynamics. The MIT technologyreview page says "Each one is created with carefully pre-programmed movements and will take many, many takes to get right before it’s shared."
So is it a sequence of individual actions: align to pallet using registration cards -> move forward with reaching distance -> detect box position -> use box picking algorithm to pick box -> backup fixed precalculated distance -> turn 90 degrees -> move forward to destination etc. This would be a brittle solution that has to be reprogrammed for the next task.
Or is it a more general closed loop solution: Theres a pile of boxes there. Move it here. Use your sensors to plan a trajectory and sequence of actions to accomplish the goal.
That's what I want to know.
[+] [-] Sohakes|7 years ago|reply
Also, I'm watching some lectures for a MIT underactuated robotics class (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeEqtTgDXFc). The professor says in one of the videos that the people who end up creating Boston Dynamics also took that course. From what I watched until now, nothing is explicitly programmed (by some vague definition of "explicitly programmed"), you just find some inputs that makes the dynamics of the model behave the way you want.
Almost certainly the birdlike movement is the outcome of the robot dynamics, and not some hardcoded rules. But things like avoiding hitting obstacles or estimating the distance, I think that needs to be explicitly programmed (and then used as input to the model such as "move the end effector to that position").
[+] [-] mv4|7 years ago|reply
Yes, it makes sense to mimic nature sometimes. But when it comes to robotic manipulators, loaders, etc - there's absolutely no reason to copy biological systems limited by strength, speed, or joint mobility. They seem to be deliberately going for that uncanny valley effect.
Eventually, someone is going to admit it. Until then, this is hugely entertaining.
[+] [-] Florin_Andrei|7 years ago|reply
Similar problems are likely to elicit similar solutions.
[+] [-] cycrutchfield|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chasing|7 years ago|reply
Also: Kept waiting for some guy to come in and try to kick it over. I thought that was Boston Dynamics' signature move in these promo videos...
[+] [-] antoineMoPa|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bamboozled|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] markbnj|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] OrgNet|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ynniv|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] harmful_stereo|7 years ago|reply
Completely retooling the society after 70 years of postwar infrastructure is going to take more than anyone would willingly sacrifice. You would have to bomb everything more than a few years old flat. At no point will it be feasible to keep leaving major investment in business and industry tied to the promises of modernizing through bleeding edge technology. The world is so vast and involves such a colossal distribution of existing resources. So many of the systems here are only functioning through broad and cheap standards, like containers, rail gauges, ship sizes.
I don't want my job. I want a machine built to put me out of it for good. I have been saying that along with a generation of workers told robots were coming for their jobs since the day i was hired. That was fifteen years ago.
We need a Manhattan project for the basic tools of industry. Now. There are thousands of novel or unproven methods of doing the most basic forms of labor our economy is based on, and we are leaving the creation of things that need to be ISO standard across the surface of the earth in order to succeed to entrepreneurs and startups and scholastic vanity.
The modern technological landscape across all disciplines looks terrifyingly similar to the cambrian explosion, which produced so many things, at such a cost of living suffering, that did not survive what came after. I'm afraid our civilization might have run out of low-hanging fruit.
To me that is the line of demarcation between the "developed world" and whatever precedes it. I don't think what is beyond that is peaceful. It necessarily undermines the infrastructure the whole society is founded on.
[+] [-] Symmetry|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ksec|7 years ago|reply
I am still baffled as to why Cold Storage today is still not fully automated.
[+] [-] lawlessone|7 years ago|reply
it's great if you're hungover.
[+] [-] viach|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dTal|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomp|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bhassel|7 years ago|reply
Handle is a robot that combines the rough-terrain capability of legs with the efficiency of wheels. It uses many of the same principles for dynamics, balance, and mobile manipulation found in the quadruped and biped robots we build, but with only 10 actuated joints, it is significantly less complex. Wheels are fast and efficient on flat surfaces while legs can go almost anywhere: by combining wheels and legs, Handle has the best of both worlds.
Handle can pick up heavy loads while occupying a small footprint, allowing it to maneuver in tight spaces. All of Handle’s joints are coordinated to deliver high-performance mobile manipulation.
[+] [-] Merad|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomcam|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dugluak|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alschwank|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pj_mukh|7 years ago|reply
I understand energy efficiency is an odd thing to optimize for at this stage, but that would explain the design.
[+] [-] robofanatic|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stcredzero|7 years ago|reply
https://naturalishistoria.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/terror...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phorusrhacidae
A robot like this, able to move on 2 wheels, could be quite versatile for combat in tight spaces. Giving it a 4 wheel bogey like on an iBot, with the ability for the bogey to fully rotate, would also enable stair climbing.
https://msu.edu/~luckie/segway/iBOT/iBOT.html
The single manipulator could be mounted with a gun/bayonet, which could also be turned around to provide a surface for a door breaching ram. The thought of such a thing is pretty terrifying.
[+] [-] jonahss|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Animats|7 years ago|reply
Palletizing is a routine robot task.[1][2] This is just palletizing with a mobile base. Now Boston Dynamics has to compete on price with the twenty or so other companies that do palletizing. If this turns out to be cost effective, Kuka will probably do it, too.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiuFkMkReSs [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgiUWycNFC0
[+] [-] andrewfromx|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sametmax|7 years ago|reply
But of course the part makers will say they are super secure and will have a PR making them look like as legit as google or amazon today. Because it's convenient, people will do it, considering the warnings comming from tin foil conspirationists.
Soon society will expect the level of productivity those parts give you, and most public and private services will assume this interface so the people not doing it will be more and more excluded from the regular system.
[+] [-] SimonPStevens|7 years ago|reply
Why have the chosen to build it with only two wheels? It's clearly unstable and has to constantly adjust it's position and counterweight to stay balanced. Sure, it's super clever and I think it looks amazing. But surely it would have been far cheaper and easier to build it with three of four wheels so it naturally stable. It would have looked less cool, but I feel like that can't be the only reason.
[+] [-] trendoid|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] return0|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cdnsteve|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qwerty2020|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neals|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] novaRom|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jpindar|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lnsru|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hmexx|7 years ago|reply
There's always something mesmorizing about them!
[+] [-] JKCalhoun|7 years ago|reply
To be sure they are "cleaned up" but the way the counterbalance is slung underneath, and "Wheeler"-like ("Return to Oz" reference) mobility, single arm with some kind of suction gripper .... it screams utility.
[+] [-] ufmace|7 years ago|reply