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Comment by mikece | Hacker News Reader

Is there a reference design/concept for zero-human warehouse operations? Stretch looks like something optimized for warehouses designed around human operators. If humans weren't even part of the design consideration I would think the robotics would be less of a replacement for the humans walking the aisles and picking stock and more integrated into the storage infrastructure itself.

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Probably the closest thing would be container harbors, where automated vehicles (AGV's) have been doing the grunt work of carrying containers around for nearly 30 years now (see e.g. https://vimeo.com/259128459). IIRC humans still operate the cranes though.

But yeah, assuming infinite space, I'd work on standardizing packaging for products; miniature containers, each containing one of a product. Probably would need multiple sizes of containers though. But a manufacturer would, instead of packaging everything in boxes, use the reusable containers to deliver products to the automated warehouses. Probably massively inefficient in terms of packaging though.

The NCSU library has an impressive system for housing and retrieving books that is fully automated, not quite a warehouse, but similar concept.

1. https://www.lib.ncsu.edu/huntlibrary/bookbot

The traditional terms is "lights off factory" or "lights off warehouse" because if there aren't any humans around why bother turning on the lights? You already have some warehouse systems automatically move goods to human pickers who just reach into the bins and put the items there into the box that gets sent to the customer. These AS/RS systems can already look like robotic warrens, I imagine when we don't need humans pickers any more you might see even more density in warehouses with layers of picking arms one on top of the other. You'd still need maintenance access though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_storage_and_retrieva...

This is an excellent point, and probably makes this more of a transition robot (transitioning operations from human centric to robot-centric). Come to think of it, most Boston dynamic robots I've seen have been designed to operate around humans (and this probably makes them more 'friendly' to humans)

The reference design/concept for zero-human warehouse operations might exist in China now: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/02/the-rush-to-deploy-robots-in...

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