Submitted 19 hours ago by AcidicBasicGlitch@lemm.ee to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.theverge.com/news/680258/amazon-training-package-delivery-humanoid-robots
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.
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.
What you just described is humans causing the issue, drome delivery would absolutely solce your problem.
You are wise
Amazon just rolled out their first production drone delivery SSD site in Phoenix. It’s sorta shot though.
Zipline is way more interesting and I can wait for them to go live in my area.
That’s a great point. Where are all those delivery drones? Lol
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.
Anything to avoid one of the richest people in the world paying his employees a livable wage.
Companies like Amazon would do anything. Except paying living wages
That is how you get to be this big.
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 all of Europe.
The main difference is that these robots kind of deserve it. Not “personally” but for what they represent.
Yep.
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
Wanna bet its 7000 Indian workers again?
Package delivery simulator, pre-order on steam
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!
…okay, I really want to know the story behind that picture!
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.
humanoid robot: dances
amazon: shock
humanoid robot: makes coffee
amazon: shock
humanoid robot: delivers package
amazon: friendly shock
If i see a humanoid robot delivering a package i will throw bricks at it and then pee on it, in the way a 3 year old would during a tantrum.
I, for one, will certainly not loot it for parts, unless it has an unfortunate accident, in which case I’m just recycling trash that someone left out.
I see you’re channeling the spirits of Social Media
Not in Philly they won’t lol
They’ll be vandalised almost immediately.
Non-consentually arbitraged
I prefer the term “beautified”.
The robot then encounters the entirely unpredictable American rural south
staircases half busted up surrounded by weeds and gravel roads full of holes
wageslave.exe has encountered an internal exception and must close
Wonder how much copper is wired up in those things
I’m pretty sure it will be a valuable amount of copper.
Amazons “genius” packing bots will throw a tiny fragile thing with a medium size heavy thing in a box 16x too big along with a shred of packing material.
Can’t wait to have that same “genius” applied to the actual delivery itself.
Seriously, I make maybe 5 or 6 Amazon purchases per year. I would say at least 50% of those disappoint in some way: the item was misleadingly listed, or it was damaged in shipping, or it doesn’t arrive when the promised. I really don’t find it convenient at all.
Amazon still can’t even figure out how to reliably get human drivers door passcodes into an apartment building, and then into its mail/package locker room.
The map system it uses for for telling drivers how to get around a city to make deliveries is also garbage, can’t account for traffic, punishes people for using faster side routes to get to the same place, tells you to park in areas that either have no parking at all, or where parking there would majorly disrupt traffic, or assumes available street parking will always exist in places and times it almost never does.
I once did an Amazon delivery gig where they booked me in for the time slot, I get to the FC, after waiting an hour they tell half of us: ‘oops we booked too many drivers, so today you all get $200 for showing up and doing nothing, go home now’
???
Update: It is day 126 and Amazon still can’t figure out where my camera is.
I know where it is. Their delivery driver stole it. (Yes, I just charged back my credit card. Their response was to send me an incredibly smarmy and condescending form email asking why, as if they don’t already know. And they lost the chargeback dispute, obviously.)
So maybe their robots won’t steal your package. They’ll just yeet it into a bush 65536 yards from your house in a random direction instead. On the bright side, you might occasionally get a package that belongs to someone else from the other side of town dropped on your lawn.
To both this and that I say no thanks; I don’t use Amazon anymore.
Amazon sent my next door neighbour a photograph of my back garden indicating they delivered the package. In the photo you can see my front door with the obviously wrong house number.
what? they gave up on the drones?
I guess they felt like drones flying over civilian populations was a bit too unsettling in this day and age, so they are shifting to humanoids that will jump suddenly from moving vehicles and dash towards a destination.
Amazon 1 year after launch: Unfortunately, the space needed for robots in the van means that the van has to return to base 5 times more often to reload with the actual packages and the extra weight of robots more than doubles the weight of the van being lugged around in the form of heavy robots. So that’s why we are having to charge more for delivery and why it is taking longer for you to get your packages. But at least we can pay fewer salaries.
Also we don’t pay taxes but will fuck up the roads with the extra weight. Good luck driving over potholes suckers!
Be funny if hackers hacked them to kill CEOs.
I’d be terrified if that thing showed up at my door.
I’d be very glad and a bit richer
Better keep a big furnace full of molten steel ready just in case.
👍
brb popping out to get that right now
Gallium would do
They already treat their workers like humanoid robots, so this tracks.
They can depreciate these assets over their useful life, because unlike your soggy flesh sack, these are capital expenses, not operating expenses.
… For now. I’m sure there are libertarians that think you should be able to sell yourself as the depreciable asset you are.
I just stop buying from Amazon
I hate that!
Why is everyone here so negative about this? This is pretty cool!
Technological unemployment is only going to get worse without a plan to support the people being replaced by automation. They can’t just ‘get another job’. As long as the benefits of this stuff only goes to shareholders, it can fuck off.
It’s called structural change. And I don’t see why it’s a bad think. We would still be plow our fields with ox and cart if we had denied every technological unemployment in the past.
Because I’ve seen this movie before, and it did not turn out well for the humans.
Reminds me of these cheeseparade skits:
At first glance it looked like the robot has a tail. That would be cool and seems like it might help somehow. Add a tail!!
Pass the blunt
the robot got stolen
They are trying to solve last-mile delivery problem
They are wasting tax payer dollars
Tax payer dollars? Also, why waste? It might pay off with more efficient and cost effective delivery.
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
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.
crimsonpoodle@pawb.social 2 hours ago
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
null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 hours ago
Like what… stairs?
Just leave the package at the bottom of the stairs like humans do.