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IKEA's Stock-Counting Warehouse Drones Will Fly Alongside Workers In the US (theverge.com) 47

Posted by BeauHD from the AI-upgrades dept.
IKEA is expanding its stock-counting drone system to operate alongside workers in the U.S., starting with its Perryville, Maryland distribution center. The Verge reports: The Verity-branded drones also come with a new AI-powered system that allows them to fly around warehouses 24/7. That means they'll now operate alongside human workers, helping to count inventory as well as identify if something's in the wrong spot. Previously, the drones only flew during nonoperational hours. Parag Parekh, the chief digital officer for Ikea retail, says in the press release that flights are prescheduled and that the drones use a "custom indoor positioning system to navigate higher levels of storage locations." They also have an obstacle detection system that allows them to reroute their paths to avoid collisions. Ikea is also working on several upgrades for the drones, including the ability to inspect unit loads and racks.

So far, Ikea's fleet consists of more than 250 drones operating across 73 warehouses in nine countries. Ikea first launched its drone system in partnership with Verity in 2021 and expanded it to more locations throughout Europe last year. Now, Ikea plans on bringing its AI-upgraded drones to more distribution centers in Europe and North America, which the company says will help "reduce the ergonomic strain on [human] co-workers, allowing them to focus on lighter and more interesting tasks."
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IKEA's Stock-Counting Warehouse Drones Will Fly Alongside Workers In the US More

IKEA's Stock-Counting Warehouse Drones Will Fly Alongside Workers In the US

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  • All sorts of technology is at its most useful when it is used to augment - not replace - humans.

    You may be able to get by with fewer humans but the goal should never be total replacement or you introduce a lot of risk of error.

    • If the cost of the errors is less (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday August 16, 2024 @07:09PM (#64712656)
      Then the cost of the wages paid then yeah you replace the humans. And that's increasingly what seems to be happening.

      It's pretty obvious were there anyone here wants to admit it we have a major industrial revolution coming. And it's going to cause massive social upheaval whether we like it or not.

      Our economic system is not going to survive unchanged. The only question is will those changes benefit the majority of people or will they make everything worse for everyone but a handful of the upper class.

      Warren Buffett famously made a comment about how there's a class war going on and it's his class that's winning. It's kind of hard to win a fight when you don't even realize you're in it.

      • We need to push politicians for UBI / Universal Basic Income. We've seen corporations be absolutely unwilling to lower prices when their costs drop - but instantly raise them when costs are predicted to be higher in the future.

        As these corps slash costs of employees, instead of pretending they'll lower costs (that the no unemployed can somehow still buy???) raise their damn taxes and fund the UBI with it.

        • UBI is worthless (Score:3, Insightful)

          by rsilvergun ( 571051 )
          At least in the way it's being proposed today. UBI by itself is just an excuse to cut off other social services like social security and Medicare and Medicaid and food stamps.

          If you continue to allow mega corporations to monopolize so that they can raise prices as high as they want All UBI does is let them suck it right back out of you.

          UBI is what libertarians who've realized anarcho-capitaliam doesn't work fall back on to try and stay away from actual democratic socialism. The reality is Democratic s

        • Maybe you haven't been paying attention. Grocery prices are falling. https://thehill.com/business/4... [thehill.com] Big Box stores are cutting prices. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/1... [cnbc.com] Used car prices are coming down. https://finance.yahoo.com/news... [yahoo.com] Commodity prices are falling across the board. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/1... [cnbc.com]

          • Your 'The Hill' article says that egg prices dropped by 0.4% since January, but they went up 104% [usinflatio...ulator.com] between 2019 ($1.40) and 2022 ($2.86).

            Your 1st CNBC link was more mixed than you portrayed it:

            Walmart’s overall inflation was flat for the quarter, and revenue growth came from selling more units, not charging higher prices, Chief Financial Officer John David Rainey told CNBC. But price dynamics weren’t consistent across products: prices continued to go up for dairy, eggs, sugar and meat, and leveled off or dropped for items including pet food, apples, potatoes, strawberries, sporting goods, and lawn and garden items.

            Just the title of the used car article has the same message: Used car prices fall again in July, down nearly 20% from pandemic highs .

            The last article was paywalled for me, but I bet it's more of the same.

            The higher interest rates are starting to have an effect, but overall inflation is still around 3% [usinflatio...ulator.com] year-on-ye

            • The only reason inflation is still at 3%, is housing. Without housing, it's almost zero. https://ycharts.com/indicators... [ycharts.com]. And housing inflation reflects a year-long average of new leases and mortgages, so if you look at current rent rates, housing is actually falling.

              In any case, the pandemic did a number on inflation. That has nothing to do with AI. And we don't need UBI just because our economic system had a shock not seen in 100 years.

              • The response to the pandemic and all of the subsequent money printing caused the inflation. The money supply chart went vertical [tradingeconomics.com] during the pandemic, and now we're spending hundreds of billions on wars, $175B to Ukraine [cfr.org] and another $18B to Israel [theintercept.com].

                And you're quoting a subset of the CPI, that's why it's called "sticky"—this is an inelastic subset of goods [stlouisfed.org]:

                The Sticky Price Consumer Price Index (CPI) is calculated from a subset of goods and services included in the CPI that change price relatively infrequently.

                And housing is important, too, it's one more expense people have.

                Agreed, this has nothing to do with AI, this has to do with an authoritarian resp

                • No, you didn't bring up UBI, but you replied to my reply to a post about UBI. This thread is literally *about* UBI.

                  Housing is important, yes. But the CPI is being pulled upwards by housing prices that are no longer in effect. Housing prices have come back down, but because of the way housing is priced into CPI, we're still seeing housing inflation from 10 months ago, still showing up in today's CPI. In other words, inflation today has fallen back down to near zero, and the current housing trend will eventua

                  • More of the same. Housing prices are not coming down, the extremely short-term (cherry-picked) prices have less inflation [cnbc.com]. The measures average longer term data to reduce the volatility; just because the spot prices aren't inflating as fast as they were does not mean it's a trend.

                    • Within the article you linked, is a link to this article: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/1... [cnbc.com]

                      The CPI for “shelter” has historically lagged home price changes by four quarters...The lag effect is largely due to how long it takes for leases to roll over into a new contract. Landlords typically renew leases every 12 months, which means current price dynamics won’t be reflected in new contracts for a year.

                      So the shelter part of CPI is dragging the over CPI high because of how long it takes leases to expire. *Current* lease rates are already falling.

                    • Take a look at this [nerdwallet.com]; it has a chart showing the lag you're talking about. This shows inflation, with the combined CPI still ~50% above the Fed's 2% target, and just the rental portion still at 5%.

                      You can see that there's a very rough lag, if you squint, but the two lines do not have the same shape, and combining more rental data might not follow the same path as the overall CPI.

                      Over the past few years it’s become more expensive than ever to rent — especially since the beginning of the pandemic. In fact, rents were unaffordable in 2022 for 22.4 million households that paid rent — an all-time high — according to a recent report on America’s Rental Housing by the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University released on Jan. 25.

                      Also, lease rates are not falling. The rise in lease prices, lease inflation, is falling, but that's still above 0, so lease pric

                    • Unfortunately, your article is paywalled.

                      Maybe where you live, lease rates are still climbing. In Houston where I live, they spiked during the pandemic, but have fallen below where they were in 2020. https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com] Maybe it's all about _where_ you live. If you live in the Bay Area or LA, then yeah, it's going to be rough.

                    • You don't have to pay for that site, but you do have to register and log in. I haven't used anything like BugMeNot in years, but that might work for you. Not just in my area, where rents are up over 33% (according to Zillow) from the start of the pandemic, but from that article:

                      ... rents were unaffordable in 2022 for 22.4 million households that paid rent — an all-time high — according to a recent report on America’s Rental Housing by the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University released on Jan. 25

                      There's a serious problem with inflation in this country. The quote above (and you can check the source it cites without even seeing that article) shows unaffordability of rents is at an all time high for the country. Your link was

                    • It seems paywalls are everywhere. And no, I won't create an account just to see an article.

                      Anyway, what this points to is not a general inflation problem, but a regional one, driven by differences in policies. California's inflation crisis is a completely separate problem from what is experienced in the rest of the country, and is driven by inflationary policies such as strict zoning laws that inhibit new construction of housing and make it unaffordable, and also driven by high levels of regulation. In Texa

                    • You sound like a global warming denier that says it's not real because they just had some snow where they live.

                    • Nice dodge.

                    • You're not arguing in good faith. You said, 2x I think, that the rental portion of the CPI is lagging the non-rental portion, admitting they're related, and now you're saying it's all local, implying there isn't a national issue.

                      I think the chart I shared was pretty clear; there is real correlation between rental and non-rental CPI; this isn't just unrelated local issues, but it's a symptom of the larger inflationary economy.

                      PS I also said there wasn't perfect correlation, but the matching trends are still

                    • No, I'm saying it's both lagging *and* local. In most of the US. In Texas, the monthly CPI actually fell, i.e., was below zero. https://www.bls.gov/regions/so... [bls.gov] The annual numbers just aren't keeping up because of the different time frames used to calculate the index. Californians think inflation is still terrible, because for them, it *is* terrible. It's not terrible everywhere, and the numbers are coming down everywhere.

                    • Prices are not coming down everywhere, the rental inflation rate (lagged) is still at 5.1% nationally, and the total CPI is at 3%, so more prices are still going up than down, and they were really high already.
          • Because we shouldn't believe our lying eyes, store receipts, and bank accounts. No, we should listen to the corporate mouth pieces you just quoted. They'll never lead us a stray! /s

            • You're right that prices haven't fallen back to where they were. Low inflation means that prices aren't continuing to rapidly increase. Those old prices you long for, aren't coming back. Ever. On the other hand, pay has increased along with inflation, so real wages are about where they were. No, the sky is not falling.

          • Who mentioned inflation? This is about automation becoming efficient and cheap enough, to drastically cut back on employment. It's coming, we need to decide how we'll deal with it as a society.

            Trolling other topics is certainly one option

            • You mentioned inflation:

              We've seen corporations be absolutely unwilling to lower prices when their costs drop

              My point is that corporations are in fact lowering prices.

        • UBI won't help. Not in the US.

          Call it what it is: A government enforced taking from the rich to give to the poor. Peter-Panism, socialism, etc. Unless you intend on a mass murder of the 1% and those controlled by them, there's too many corrupt asshats in the US' halls of power for that to ever work.

          All of those asshats want toiling from those under them so they can feel good about themselves and their station in life. Can you imagine the reactions from Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, etc. if they suddenly w

      • This revolution isn't going to come as fast as Chicken Little thinks it is. This type of technology is extremely expensive. There's a reason it's only being deployed by big, rich companies like Walmart and Ikea.

        The technology has existed for decades, to completely automate everything that a fast food restaurant does. So why aren't automated restaurants sweeping across the country and the world? The answer is that it's much harder to implement than anyone would think. https://foodondemand.com/02132... [foodondemand.com]

        We have

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by 2TecTom ( 311314 )

        I won't be shopping at Ikea anymore. In fact, I don't shop at or work with corporate scum. That would be unethical.

    • The goal must be to maximize production. If humans are being made jobless by it, we must tax the robots so that everyone can have a baseline income that would allow them to afford housing and food. The solution to poverty isn't to increase scarcity, but to reduce it. A chunk of the robot's "salary" and benefits must go to humans. Politicians and business people strive to increase scarcity (because it boosts their own value), whereas engineers try to increase production.

    • All sorts of technology is at its most useful when it is used to augment - not replace - humans.

      You may be able to get by with fewer humans but the goal should never be total replacement or you introduce a lot of risk of error.

      I agree wholeheartedly with your sentiment here, but Greed isn’t looking for augmentation. That doesn’t solve the problem of pain-in-the-ass meatsacks constantly bitching about needing time off to eat, sleep, and pay raises to enjoy that unprofitable thing called ‘life”. Greed doesn’t give a fuck about any of that. Greed cares about feeding Greed.

      Awesome idea? I’d hold off on that praise for now. Today’s drone is looking to manage product inventory to reduce was

  • Until you take an ear off.

    • Indoor drones, like the hover X1, (not sure what Ikea uses) which have a safety grid .. cannot take off an ear or cause serious injury in any normal uncontrived circumstance (except where you deliberately take off the safety shield or poke a finger in there). Somebody mentioned hair could get caught it in a freak accident .. umm ok. I doubt the motors have enough torque to pull out hair. .. It might hurt like a bitch I guess.

      • I was going by the article pic. The "grid" didn't seem all that tight. That pic might have been illustrative rather than actual depiction. That woman had way too much hair out there too for whirly things being in the air near her. But I would say that most likely, the drone would wind up the hair and hit one in the face area or around the head or shoulders. Manual injuries from fighting it off instinctively. Might be interesting to see some staged crash tests with dummies with and without defensive movement

        • The auto insurance commercial with the human "bee" flying around in the car and causing a crash into a roadside farm stand, comes to mind.

      • While the drone manufacturer doesn't recommend their drones be modified to cut off employee's ears, I'm sure it can be modified to do that if you want.

  • That means they'll now operate alongside human workers, helping to count inventory as well as identify if something's in the wrong spot.

    Sounds decent..until you learn the next firmware update no longer looks to see if something is in the “wrong” spot. but instead looks to identify if someone is in the “wrong” spot. For a “wrong” amount of time.

    I’d bet an employee on that, but taking money from someone standing in the unemployment line is just downright rude.

  • Inventory should be a matter of tracking number of items delivered minus items sold. Everything's barcode scanned, so they know exactly what is leaving the store via sales. If they're so uncertain of the number of items on the shelves that they need robots to count them, that means a non-trivial amount of inventory is shrinking through theft. I'd say close up the holes where inventory is leaking out of the store rather than obsess with counting items on shelves.

    Besides, they should have business intellige
    • I would have thought that at least high-value items could have a tracking tag attached by the manufacturer, remove and re-cycle at checkout. I'm sure it's not foolproof but I imagine it woudl get a large percentage of the job done if the warehouse is secure enough and the tags were time consuming enough to remove
      • Other than firearms and jewelry, there is rarely such special handling and security.

        If the shipping manifest says 2,000 Star Wars old, fat and gray Luke Skywalker action figures then that number will just get copied to the inventory system, and however many case are on the loading dock floor will get put on warehouse shelves without any counting.

    • Inventory should be a matter of tracking number of items delivered minus items sold.

      I am going to guess that you have never worked in a warehouse. Sometimes the delivery truck does not really carry the number of items the manifest says. There was a mistake during loading. Something was broken and just thrown out without reporting it. Something was stolen. So the truck gets unloaded at the warehouse. Perhaps something gets left on the truck. Here too something gets broken and just thrown out without reporting it. And of course, something gets stolen. An order comes in and the wrong item del

    • Inventory lives in meatspace. Got to have physical inventory to keep logical inventory accurate; meatspace has too many analog-to-digital rounding errors (like theft, breakage, human error) to ever be fully digital. The more you come up with schemes like RFID or even drones like A/I, the more creative meatspace will become. I once saw what looked like a pallet full of SuperSparc servers (I was working at a used hardware wholesale firm, I was the guy that inventoried and tested incoming used hardware) art
  • Oh you're slacking per the drone, Fired !

  • 'So far, Ikea's fleet consists of more than 250 drones operating across 73 warehouses in nine countries. '

    Should be more, but the workers couldn't figure out how to put them together from the Ikea blueprint.

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