Amazon, which has introduced 45000 robots, is pushing for a smart warehousing revolution

Source：Updated：2017-07-31 07:50:28

Amazon has introduced 45,000 robots, none of which have robotic arms. 
 
More than 20 companies around the world have introduced flat-wheeled robots to deliver goods to their large logistics centers. But it can do exactly what humans can do, such as taking objects out of shelves or into those brown boxes, and taking them home with garbage bags, pens and books. Robots that can do this sort of sorting task can improve amazon's efficiency and make it less dependent on employees. 
 
Since a $775 million deal to buy 2012 Kiva Systems, amazon, there is no stop intelligent investment, warehousing logistics, at the same time, also let people see the thorough transformation of the e-commerce is ongoing. Now, retailers who want to move into e-commerce and are reluctant to change their operating models in automation and efficiency have barely existed. In 2016, global sales of logistics warehousing robots reached $1.9 billion, and according to research firm Tractica, the market will be $22.4 billion by 2021. The sales volume of 40,000 logistics units last year is expected to reach 620,000 units by 2021. 
 
To find a better robotic solution, amazon hosts the mechanical sorting challenge again. The contest was held on July 27 in Nagoya, Japan, as part of this year's RoboCup, the robot industry competition. Teams need to pick up towels, toilet brushes and other items before moving them into storage boxes and storage boxes. The best performers will take all of the $250,000 from the prize pool. 
 
Look for potential solutions 
 
Amazon has hosted such events two years ago. This year, amazon revised the rules to make it more difficult. "I think this more in line with the real warehouse environment," Australia's centre of excellence robot visual team leader Juxi Leitner said, "the robot makes people try to do to solve their problems, in the case of don't need to hire any person to keep their competitiveness. 
 
Compared to last year, the difficulty is that the robot work space is smaller, and these robots need to deal with objects that are either adjacent or adjacent to each other. The bigger challenge is that half of the objects the robot handles in the round will be displayed 30 minutes before the start of the game. 
 
This is a headache for teams, but it is more in line with the internal conditions of the amazon warehouse, where grasping robots need to learn quickly. "The logistics center receives tens of thousands of new items every day," says Alberto Rodriguez, a robotics specialist at MIT, who is part of the advisory board that helps amazon design competitions. Teams need to develop a workflow, provide the new items images of different Angle to the machine learning software, so that the robot in half an hour to understand how to grab some of it had never seen before. 
 
Even though amazon is now willing to introduce robotic arms, manipulating objects remains one of the most difficult problems in robotics. As Stephanie Tellex, a professor at brown university, says: most of the time, most robots can't pick up most of the stuff. It is not difficult to program a robot to pick up a small number of objects, but the problem has not been solved until the robot can handle multiple objects reliably and quickly adapt to new items. 
 
With so many problems to be solved, the contest will be as full of research and robotics as possible, allowing machines to acquire skills more quickly. The contestants will exhibit various shapes of robots and their strategies, and inevitably there will be fixes and adjustments. "There are a lot of innovative ideas that are being born, but there is still a lot of room for improvement," said Leitner, a veteran contestant. 
 
Many teams put mechanical claws on industrial mechanical arms. The machine from the Leitner team, known as the Cartman, is a mechanical gantry that moves mechanical claws and suction cups along a straight line, like a 3-d printer moves its print head. 
 
The Massachusetts institute of technology and Princeton, led by Rodriguez, are testing a new way to give robots touch. In the case of not to think, people is through the touch of the fingertip to adapt to how to grab or moving objects, but engineers have stumbled on a method to let the robot knew what they were doing. The team used a new method, called GelSight by miniature cameras inside robot track their fingers on the surface of the rubber membrane, the method is based on rubber membrane deformation under the influence of the collision. 
 
In addition to the innovative ideas on display in Nagoya, amazon may also have some ways to deploy mechanical sorters. "Only by simplifying the conditions can we realize the sorting of robots." NimbRo team leader Sven Behnke said he won second place in last year's game. 
 
If the warehouse is full of interval consistent box object, then the robot can help you, but this situation is far from the actual circumstances of the amazon warehouse, amazon warehouse store there are millions of different kinds of items. "You're going to be touched," said Bruce Welty, founder and chairman of Locus Robotics. "but robots are far from being able to do what we need to do." Locus of Robotics, make the wheel warehouse robot can pick out the items by the human, Welty believes that the future developed robots, including its company will not compete with the human work, but work to fill the gap. 
 
And when the solutions to these competing tasks can be commercialized, Rodriguez, of the Massachusetts institute of technology, reckons it will take five more years. 
 
The application of robots in the field of logistics is becoming a trend 
 
In fact, because of its early layout, amazon founder bezos has long argued that his competitors will be years behind amazon. In 2012, amazon bought Kiva more of a defensive move aimed at improving the company's order management. Kiva is a leading supplier of warehousing logistics solutions, and rivals such as Staples, Walgreens and Gap, among others, have also applied Kiva's technology. After amazon's purchase, these companies have lost their functional support. 
 
Thus, the gap left by the acquisition of Kiva has led some robotics companies to focus on the application of the logistics industry and promote the target of intelligent warehouses to small and medium sized retailers. 
 
Locus Robotics, a spokesman said: "this is one of products, customization, customer service and delivery speed demand is higher and higher era of amazon. In order to remain competitive in this era, smaller firms have to reconsider the business strategies and solutions." 
 
As one of the newly emerging players in the post-kiva ecosystem, Locus is looking for a market that can quickly mature for its products. Its clients include Quiet Logistics, which provides more than $1 billion in e-commerce orders for brands such as Zara, Bonobos and Glossier each year, as well as the DHL supply chain. 
 
In addition, some companies are offering flexible customization solutions for retailers and order sorting centers. In April, the company, which was founded in 2014, has launched two large logistics carriers, including one capable of carrying 500 kilograms of payload. In August 2016, inVia announced the launch of the world's first "cargo to box" robot system, with the goal of transforming the way e-commerce suppliers and warehouses handle materials. 
 
Today, with e-commerce still running at high speed, the transformation of warehousing and logistics industry to intellectualization is imperative, as well as greater market space for robotics.