Silly me, there was a post in here with a link to a site where some british engineer had built a huge robot powered by a Mini Cooper motor. Can't locate that post/kink anymore, but I'm hope someone else could provied me with that link?
I remember the thread well. Here's the link to the site:
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And here's the discussion where I and others dissect the videos, especially the car stopping one:
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Now where's that future-of-robotics site with the novel where minimum-wage workers are told what to do by a robot through their headset? It was posted here a couple months ago but I can't find it...
I did a system like this years ago for fulfilling grocery orders over the internet. The person has a device on their arm that has a laser barcode scanner, and two way radio. The computer tells you what to get, (Go to aisle 12, on the right, get 5 cans of Del Monte prunes, 8 Oz, place one in order 5, and four in order nine) and the person scans what they pick up, verifying that they got the right thing. They are picking 10 orders at once. Checkout happens as the order is shopped, so when they are done shopping it, they just put it in the holding bin for delivery.
The system was specifically designed to require NO training at all, even managers could use it.
- also relevant are the Robotic Nation essays. Google groups shows this site was discussed here last year, but I saw mention of it a month or three ago, perhaps on slashdot.
Not quite the same as in the novel, but similar enough, and (presuming you have a good-enough solution to the traveling-salesman, er, traveling order-picker problem) it sure appears efficient. As far as it being the future, the author presumes that the vast majority of low-paying jobs could be done this way.
It's great that even a manager could do it, but his real job is to find someone else to do it, and of course he would never stoop that low himself. Maybe he could get a salesman to do it.
Errors in picking will eat ALL your profits, in the grocery biz, and we pretty much established that you'd have to be deliberately screwing up, to make errors with this system.
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