These Warehouse Robots Can Boost Productivity By 800%

[Purveyor]

The Locus robot can zip around a clothing warehouse larger than the size of six football fields. It can also work for 24 hours, without a break for lunch or a salary.

The new bot, created by Locus Robotics, just launched in its first warehouse: a Devens, Massachusetts space owned by Quiet Logistics, a warehousing company that fills online orders for both small startups and megabrands like Zara and Bonobos. The robots transport items that have been picked off the shelves by humans, and bring them to the front of the warehouse to be sealed and delivered.

"We developed a system where the robots do all the walking," Locus Robotics CEO Bruce Welty tells Tech Insider. "As retailers continue to exceed expectation around next-day shipping, they're going to look to technology to help them provide an even faster turn-around."

The bots work alongside humans and do all the normal grunt work. Warehouse workers usually walk 12 to 16 miles each day. With the robots, they don't have to.

The robots now meet the human workers in the middle of the warehouse. As soon as someone completes an order online, the bot's system knows exactly where to go in the 275,000-square-foot warehouse.

MORE...

http://www.techinsider.io/robots-in-warehouses-for-online-shopping-2016-1

[randys1]

1. Automation wont be the issue, as it will be inevitable. The issue will be

do we allow all the profits to go to a handful of people, resulting in the rest of us being forever in poverty?

[leftstreet]

5. +1

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

2. Woohoo! Seven more humans losing jobs! nt

[Purveyor]

3. Robotic burger-flippers are next, once the costs are justifiable. eom

[snooper2]

12. And the humans who built the bots, marketed the bots, bots salespeople, bot technicians

Better jobs all around then the jobs being replaced by said,


Um,

Bots


I used to hear the same thing about IVR technology. Humans losing jobs! Well, better jobs by companies like LiveOps that produce IVR systems.

[Taitertots]

4. Good. Now let's reform our economic system so the productive gains don't go to a handful of people.

Or continue with the status quo.

[KamaAina]

6. If Kurt Vonnegut were still around, he'd be working on a sequel to Player Piano.

[jmowreader]

7. Devens, Massachusetts, used to be an Army base

It's where they taught about half the Army's signals intelligence personnel.

[Recursion]

8. Ah, the old crows...

It's all out in AZ now, right?

[jmowreader]

10. The parts that were at Devens are

We also had SIGINT training at Pensacola, Florida, and Goodfellow Air Force Base, Texas, and those schools are still there.

[B Calm]

9. Now all they need is a robot to replace the CEO.

[Iggo]

11. Robots gonna buy these products, too?