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Wal-Mart Says It Is 6-9 Months From Using Drones To Check Warehouse Inventory (yahoo.com) 106

Posted by msmash from the shape-of-things-to-come dept.
Multinational retail corporation Wal-mart announced on Thursday that it is six to nine months from starting to use drones to check warehouse inventories in the United States. The drones, which are capable of operating on autopilot, fly through the aisles snapping 30 images a second, and deliver real-time data to employees about whether the correct product is shelved in the proper place. From a Reuters report: Finding ways to more efficiently warehouse, transport and deliver goods to customers has taken on new importance for Wal-Mart as it deals with wages costs while seeking to beat back price competition and boost online sales. Wal-Mart said the camera and technology on top of the drones have been custom-built for the retailer.
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Wal-Mart Says It Is 6-9 Months From Using Drones To Check Warehouse Inventory More

Wal-Mart Says It Is 6-9 Months From Using Drones To Check Warehouse Inventory

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  • Gary is NOT a drone! (Score:3)

    by NotDrWho ( 3543773 ) on Thursday June 02, 2016 @04:00PM (#52235791)

    That was a mean thing to say, Walmart.

  • now...the Drones of Walmart (Score:4, Funny)

    by turkeydance ( 1266624 ) on Thursday June 02, 2016 @04:02PM (#52235813)
    taking pictures for the People of Walmart

  • as it deals with wages costs while seeking to beat back price competition

    This means "maintain high margins by laying people off"

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jedidiah ( 1196 )

      This seems like something that will add capabilities not possible or practical with their current workforce.

      • This seems like something that will add capabilities not possible or practical with their current workforce.

        It will synergistically disrupt platforms while enhancing cloud value.

    • How high do you imagine their actual net margins to be? Specifically.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Falos ( 2905315 )
        "Superior" is the exact, "specific" height of causation, the only consequence they care about. With good reason.

      • 5% EBIT percentage and 3% net income applicable to common stock, relative to revenue for the year ending January 31, 2016. You are welcome.

        • Thanks. That is really much too much money. They should not be allowed to earn money like that. Nobody who has Walmart stock in their retirement accounts should be allowed to share in any of that enormous, evil profit. We have to Bern this down, along with any banks that help them do their evil business with those enormous profits that are keeping 47% of the people in the country from making enough money to pay income taxes.

    • This means "maintain high margins by laying people off"

      My hypocrisy detector is beeping. How many unnecessary people do you employ?

  • Weren't these folks the same ones that pioneered importing everything from China back when? Now, everyone has to do it to remain "competitive". Now, robots staffing the warehouses, what next? Will they also replace the single employee that covers pretty much the entire sales floor with custom Cortana based customer service bots?

    At the end of this mad race to the bottom we call capitalism who will be left with jobs so they can, you know, shop at Wal-Mart?

    • Will they also replace the single employee that covers pretty much the entire sales floor with custom Cortana based customer service bots?

      http://www.kurzweilai.net/imag...

    • They need to replace the Waltons with a PHP script that randomly disperses small amounts of their dollars to random people till most of its gone, then keeps dispersing as it's rolling in. Thats the only way this sh1t is going to work long term

    • People shop there for inexpensive stuff. Some of that stuff is made in China, so substitute "cheap" for "inexpensive," but the premise is the same. I shop there when "cheap/inexpensive" is what is driving the purchase. When "quality" is driving the purchase, I shop elsewhere. I have a choice, and I make it. Some people are poor, do not have a choice, and shop at Walmart all the time. Thank God for Walmart.

      Let robots and automation take over whatever jobs they can, and free Man to do the jobs only he can

      • As we developed machine ability faster than we trained people for new job openings, people found out they were not the buggy whip manufacturer, they were the horse.
      • Indeed. As Mike Rowe has pointed out, there is a shortage of good skilled trade workers out there now: plumbers, electricians, carpenters, sheet metal workers, etc.. and everything is geared towards STEM now. The trades pay pretty well, they'll probably never become obsolete, and someone has to be able to do that stuff.

    • >

      At the end of this mad race to the bottom we call capitalism who will be left with jobs so they can, you know, shop at Wal-Mart?

      I've seen that movie. It's called Idiocracy and the computers that ran Brawndo fired the CEO due to stock price drops. Even the CEO wasn't as important as the computers that ran the company.

  • Seems Too Expensive (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Why wouldn't static cameras work better? Or even cameras that travel along ceiling rails and can zoom in to the specific product location. Those sound cheaper than custom-designed drones.

    • Free publicity

    • Re:Seems Too Expensive (Score:4, Insightful)

      by TheDanish ( 576008 ) on Thursday June 02, 2016 @04:37PM (#52236189) Journal
      If you're talking about the back room of a walmart store, then maaaaaaybe. But installing static cameras and/or rails that capture EVERY location's contents accurately doesn't scale well with the 1 million sqft standalone warehouses they're talking about. The costs would far exceed any benefit. And gods forbid if you want to reconfigure your racks! Meanwhile, if you can make a $500 drone that can do inventory counts automatically, even if you have to manually program its flight path each time you change your rack layout, you've just saved a crapload of money.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      You have to hire someone at the location in the United States to install fixed cameras or rails. Then you have to have someone service/upgrade them as they break and get old. A drone can be manufactured in whatever place is cheaper than China now and thrown away when it gets broken or outdated. Drones can be programmed (and reprogrammed, when the warehouse layout changes) in one salaried employee's unpaid overtime.

    • Why wouldn't static cameras work better?

      Because you would need a lot of them. Maybe one for every pallet rack. A Walmart distribution center contains thousands of racks.

      Or even cameras that travel along ceiling rails and can zoom in to the specific product location.

      You would need rails for every aisle, and very high res cameras to see pallet barcodes from a 48 ft ceiling at a high angle. They would be way out of range of any passive RFID pallet tags.

      Those sound cheaper than custom-designed drones.

      The drones are mostly off-the-shelf. Only a few components are customized. You would only need two or three drones per warehouse (one working, and one or two backups). That would be way che

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Mashiki ( 184564 )

        A lot of National Part Distribution Center's(NPDC's aka the big auto company warehouses) have already tried all this stuff(cameras, RFID's, drones, fully automated systems, etc), walmart could save themselves time and effort and simply look at trials that GM/Ford/Chrysler/Honda/Toyota places and find out that none of it works and people on the ground does. Or they can just enjoy wasting the money on it. If it's one thing I've learned it's that when a company's top people get an idea in their head that some

        • Or they could realize that tech improves in both capability and cost effectiveness, and drone tech in particular has been improving rapidly. So it is likely a good time to revisit the idea.

          I own a quadcopter drone. I am also an embedded system programmer. I used to work in a warehouse, drove a forklift, and participated in many inventory audits. Maybe I am missing something, but I just don't see any roadblocks to making it work. The biggest obstacle would be the lack of GPS inside the warehouse, but an

  • Amazon behind? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by avandesande ( 143899 ) on Thursday June 02, 2016 @04:21PM (#52236023) Journal
    Seems like this would be applied readily to Amazon warehouses- you could even have drones pick small items right off the shelf.

  • Wal-Mart wages (Score:4, Informative)

    by fiannaFailMan ( 702447 ) on Thursday June 02, 2016 @04:23PM (#52236057) Journal

    "... as it deals with wages costs ..."

    LOL! Wal-Mart has to "deal with wages costs!" HAHAHA! That's a good one! From the company that pays starvation wages and accompanies pay checks with info about where to apply for food stamps!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ffkom ( 3519199 )
      Even more funny given Walmarts Epic Fail [wordpress.com] in Germany, where they failed to compete against other discounters paying higher wages and providing more benefits.

  • gotta take an umbrella, some stick or a fly swatter with you when you go there and the things are flirring around to hit them if they come too close.

    Also, how would they count tightly stacked small boxes in rows of 1' deep shelfs?

    Wmart saving even more on sub-living hourly wages using retirees on medicare shaving off some bucks and loading it on the general population.

    Yeah! Capitalism is better than Socialism (not my statement, but another guy's who was unable to define what those terms mean and where pur

  • Because drones (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wcrowe ( 94389 ) on Thursday June 02, 2016 @04:52PM (#52236305)

    Surely they're not just relying on video alone. Maybe RFIDs play a role too. Otherwise, this seems like a really expensive and error-prone way of managing warehouse space. Other warehouse inventory systems would seem to be more accurate and cheaper (things like pick-to-light; put-to-light, etc).

  • Their problem seems to be related to the inability to move their products from their store warehouse to their shelves so the public can actually purchase the products.

  • Whenever I encounter a blue-uniformed worker in the store other than at checkout, it's a vendor doing the employees' work for them.

  • Hope you're happy.... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by erp_consultant ( 2614861 ) on Thursday June 02, 2016 @06:15PM (#52236925)

    all you out there clamoring for $15/hr minimum wage. This is the beginning of the end of low paying/entry level jobs. We're seeing this in the fast food industry as well with automated french fry machines, and probably burger makers soon too. When government decides to get involved and try to tell businesses how to do things this is the predictable response.

    When you are in a low margin business like fast food, or WalMart for that matter, you simply can't make a profit paying people $15/hr for entry level jobs that require little to no skill. So they turn to cheaper robots. So instead of a bunch of $10/hr jobs you end up with zero, or close to zero, $15/hr jobs.

    • Let's do a thought experiment with some made up, but representative numbers.

      We have French Fries 'r Us, which is open 16 hours per day. Each day, they have 2 employees dedicated to making the french fries (each doing an 8 hour shift), and the owner is considering automation to eliminate the position of Fry Frier. He finds that the French Fry Machine can be purchased for $180k.

      Paying each of his 2 full time Fry Friers $15/hour comes to ~$62k per year. So, the machine has a 3 year ROI, what a deal! He dec

      • That's an interesting analysis. Tasks that can be automated WILL be automated. It's only a matter of when and to what extent. In the Auto industry we have seen what it might look like already. You have robots that can create thousands of perfect welds, better than any human could do. Then you have a human to inspect the welds to make sure nothing was missed. That's the model. Robot makes the fries, human inspects the fries before they get served to anyone.

        As you pointed out above, raising the minimum wage (

  • the drones will be made in china
  • I will build the greatest Walmart that you've ever seen. And I would never do this myself. But I hope it will be so -- actually, it will even look great. I already know what it should look like. You know, the other day, they were saying, I was watching these characters -- politicians that are running against me -- you can't get Mexico to pay for the Walmart! Of course you can. They can't because they never would even think of it.
    Do you know how much Mexico is making from the United States? That's peanuts,

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