If I get one of those, I’m definitely killing it and stealing its copper. Amazon can pay for the repairs.
Yo why tf can’t they just fucking pay people a reasonable wage AND give them sane working conditions? This is insane. Capitalism does not favor anyone except the rich. It’s time to tear down this wall of mediocrity and face the facts. No sense of government intervention will fix this. It must all be rewritten entirely.
Because it’s not real. It’s purely for marketing, not for actual wide-spread implementation.
Even in the best of cases, even factoring in economy of scale and all that, a robot like that will cost upwards of €50k at least, probably closer to double that, will require constant maintainance, and the risk of vandalism or accidental damage is really high. And you’ll likely need a (skilled) human operator nearby anyway, because the delivery vehicle doesn’t drive itself.
The purpose of projects like this is marketing and public perception.
- The company looks futuristic and future proof. That’s good to get investors.
- The company looks like they could replace humans with robots at any time. That’s good with negotiations with unions and workers.
- The company gets into headlines worldwide. That’s advertisement they don’t have to pay for.
This robot is not meant to ever go mainstream. Maybe there will be a handful of routes where they will be implemented for marketing purposes, but like drone delivery and similar gimmicks, it won’t beat a criminally underpaid delivery human on price, and that’s the only metric that counts for a company like Amazon.
So, from what little research I did the robots cost from 5000$ to 500000$, as most articles point out the advanced robots cost 200000-300000$. In a lot of places around the world that’s like paying a human for 8-10 years. Humans are easily “replaceable”, where those robots have maintenance cost additional to the initial “investment”. How is that feasible in the eyes of the big money oligarchs? I genuinely don’t understand the end goal here.
The labor aspect of class politics is complicated.
But you don’t have to understand any of it to think stealing these would be cool as fuck.
I don’t think they really plan to replace workers with robots. It fulfills two other purposes:
- Keep the work force humble by threatening them with permanent replaceability.
- Keep the stock holders happy. This shit simulates “innovation” like the delivery drones 10 years ago.
if its actually feasible and it reduces cost, then it will be the plan. right now though, its bullshit. As soon as people start stealing and destroying these 5000-500000 dollar robots all of the potential profit goes out the window.
I may lack imagination but I can’t see a future where the materials and skills needed to build such robots get cheap enough to replace humans.
Especially if they get trashed and stolen every once in a while.Even if you make them in large quantities, material cost alone will be at least €50k. You will need a skilled operator nearby, and constant maintainance, and if you lose even one per year, a regular underpaid human worker will be much cheaper.
These things are pure marketing devices to pacify investors, generate headlines and make unions and workers afraid.
When the mask comes off, humans will revolt. Robots won’t.
Or, that’s the delusion.
everyone knows its just going to be indians in a data center in india controlling the bots.
They will train it so well, it will even collapse like a human when overworked! https://youtu.be/6Kp5qrCExps . I recognized that bot from the photo.
I tend to disbelieve this, mainly because a humanoid robot would be overkill. Custom-purpose robots would be much cheaper to design, build and maintain, with fewer potential failure points.
Eh I dunno there’s so much infrastructure that is human centric; if you could make a humanoid robot it could easily traverse all the human designed places
The main problem is walking on unpredictable terrain, which spidery or doggy robots can do with fewer balance issues than two-legged humanoid ones.
Like what… stairs?
Just leave the package at the bottom of the stairs like humans do.
Also doors and gates
They may also have concluded that the public finds a humanoid robot more acceptable than those cube 4-wheeled robots that never took off that people like to tip and kick over and stuff
You don’t really need to be humanoid to manipulate ddmoors and gates
Anything to avoid one of the richest people in the world paying his employees a livable wage.
Bro that is so gonna get HitchBot’ed
a photo was tweeted, showing that the robot had been stripped “beyond repair” and decapitated in Philadelphia. The robot was located by some people following its progress on its website. The head was never found.
Also, like… if you wanna replace human workers, fine, just give us the UBI.
Otherwise, riots would be justified.
Just one shitty makeshift EMP and that thing is toast.
as someone who has spent time living in Philly what were they THINKING lmfao
I can’t wait to throw a Faraday blanket over one of these and jtag some open source firmware on it. What do you mean steal? I didn’t steal anything, I just repurposed some garbage left on my front step!
humanoid robot: dances
amazon: shock
humanoid robot: makes coffee
amazon: shock
humanoid robot: delivers package
amazon: friendly shock
The head was never found
I imagine they will scale back robot design and just throw from the truck.
…okay, I really want to know the story behind that picture!
“…creation of motion graphics designer Tom Coben…” https://mashable.com/video/bowling-robot-video-computer-generated
I’m gonna say CGI. Arm isn’t mounted to the floor (I can tell by the pixels), no cables going to the arm, holding the bowling ball like that is extremely unsafe.
Gif compression definitely makes it look more believable, I remember falling for this the first time I saw it
Amazon announced using drones in 2014. In pop culture, drone delivery is like an assumed common practice. Yet fucking nobody gets their packages delivered by drone. It’s been over a decade.
These robots are vaporware. Amazon will get a stock bump and that’s the whole point.
Yeah, humans regularly deliver stuff wrong on our street. There is no way robots will manage. I get packages for both by neighbours and they get mine more often than correct deliveries and one of my neighbours is a business.
Stop redirecting them. Make it cost them.
Tell your neighbors to file an “it arrived late” or “it didn’t arrive” complaint. Get two and send one back. Their fault for being shit companies.
If something is delivered to you by mistake, it’s not your responsibility to fix the mistake, you just got free stuff.
If it goes through USPS, it might be a federal offense to open stuff delivered via USPS, but is that true of third party parcel delivery? Almost certainly not, because USPS is a government org and those third party shit delivery companies aren’t…
So now any package that’s delivered to me by anyone other than USPS… it’s mine now, and I open it to see if I want whatever trash my neighbors are buying.
I used to try to fix the problem… but then I realized it’s NOT MY PROBLEM.
At my old workplace we ended up getting like a thousand toilet seats delivered to us. We were a web publishing firm.
Perhaps it wasn’t an accident… 😂
What makes you think you can’t have individualized instructions for harder to reach addresses? After the first failure it’s pretty trivial to go out and fix it. Google does far more work maintaining maps and directions services.
Vs having a new delivery guy get confused every other week?
What you just described is humans causing the issue, drone delivery would absolutely solve your problem.
The drone’s only as good as its software, the map it’s using, and the address data it’s given. All of which were created by fallible humans.
Ain’t it fun having turtles all the way down?
43.9454776, -123.5393014
^ no address, GPS is very very precise.
Even as pitched, you still have to print out a QR code and staple it to your front lawn for every package. Presumably, they want you to be home for it since it’s dropped out in the open and might bounce into the street.
Amazon’s drone delivery is trash, you’re correct. But eventually it will be significantly better than humans, input gps location and the product will be at that exact location give or take 1 foot
Take a look at ziplines upcoming drone delivery service for instance, it will be significantly better than Amazon’s and will be way better than a human delivery driver.
eventually
It’s been ten fucking years. They are one of the top five companies in the world. What are we waiting for here?
All of the investors that originally paid into the idea have already made their money. There is no reason to continue the project.
Can you point to deliveries that actually use any of that?
Down voted for the obvious observation. A drone just needs to get explicit instructions ones a report is filled and it won’t be an issue. Google does more work on Google maps IMO.
You are wise
That’s a great point. Where are all those delivery drones? Lol
Amazon just rolled out their first production drone delivery SSD site in Phoenix. It’s sorta shit though.
Zipline is way more interesting and I cant wait for them to go live in my area.
Airspace rules are a huge factor there. I see delivery robots on the sidewalk often enough though.
I suspect most companies are still waiting out the testing and waiting for costs to be reduced.
Wanna bet its 7000 Indian workers again?
just like thier shop and go stores, were mostly india controlled. probably 70k indias.
Package delivery simulator, pre-order on steam
Evil genius level right here
Companies like Amazon would do anything. Except paying living wages
Remember that hitch hiking robot that made it across Canada but only made it to New Jersey (started in NYC) in America? These will 100% get the same treatment everywhere on earth.
Not only Canada, but also Japan and Europe.
The main difference is that these robots kind of deserve it. Not “personally” but for what they represent.
That is how you get to be this big.
Yep.
