News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot by daveguy on Thursday October 09, 2025 @01:40PM (#45530759)
Is it really sorting? All I see is the humanoid robot moving similarly shaped / sized packages from one conveyor belt to a platform to another conveyor belt. A little industrial automation design would be much more effective, cheaper, and faster compared to the task it is performing.
Re:Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot by flutas on Thursday October 09, 2025 @01:57PM (#45530956)
Plus it's missing the large stack of packages already in the corner that...seems like they will forever be stuck there.
Re:Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot by yorwba on Thursday October 09, 2025 @05:12PM (#45533149)
The actual sorting is typically automated with scanners reading the labels and shunting packages from one conveyor belt onto another, basically a physical sorting network.

Tasks left for human "sorters" to do are:

- put packages on conveyor belt so the scanner can read the label (as done by the robot in the video)

- deal with damaged or unreadable packages that can't be processed automatically

- when a package gets jammed and forces the conveyor belt to stop, remove the offending package before restarting

- receive packages at the other end and load them into vehicles

Generally the difficulty with all of these is dealing with variability and humans act as variability absorbers so the machines can operate smoothly.

Re:Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot by ACCount37 on Thursday October 09, 2025 @07:40PM (#45534136)
Which is why robots that can also absorb variability in the same way humans do would be so valuable.