resolution
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Post by resolution on Oct 29, 2014 21:42:27 GMT -5
Lowe's is apparently going to pilot some robot store clerks in one of their stores. I have to admit, the robot in the video appears more helpful than most normal clerks and I wouldn't mind seeing them in my local Lowes. I love the scanning feature where you can hold up the screw you want to replace and it will scan it and take you to the right spot in the store.
However it raises the specter of a whole new category of jobs that could become automated. I had assumed that truck drivers and warehouse workers are at serious risk these days, but store clerks surprises me.
So what do you think? Would you use the robot clerk or require a human one? What do we do with all the customer service workers if they get replaced by the robots?
www.usnews.com/news/business/articles/2014/10/28/lowes-debuts-customer-service-robots-in-store
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milee
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Post by milee on Oct 29, 2014 22:01:48 GMT -5
I'd be happy to get help in whatever format it is given.
Right now, the closest Home Depot is driving me nuts. They apparently are trying to address the customer complaints that there aren't enough employees, but they're going about it in all the wrong ways. I do not need 2 people greeting me at the door and 2-3 more standing in front of registers saying "hi" as well. None of these people are cashiers and none of them knows where anything is or how to fix stuff, they're literally just greeter types. God forbid you have an actual question about where a specific item is located - the half dozen smiling people just standing at the front of the store can't help you. They haven't beefed up the staff of knowledgeable department help and with the self-checkouts installed they've actually reduced the number of live cashiers which you sometimes need for odd or unmarked stuff. So they're adding people, but they're not employees who are at all useful to me. It's my own personal Hell - I have to exchange mindless inanities with 6 different employees (feels a little like running a useless but cheery gauntlet) but can't actually get help to find things or to ring up odd items.
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Opti
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Post by Opti on Oct 29, 2014 22:15:31 GMT -5
Its an interesting idea, but I doubt the knowledge I like in a clerk will have been input into the robot at least at this time.
I had the great fortune to be located near a good hardware store with clerks who actually knew their products and how to use them. I could get suggestions on things and reasons why I shouldn't buy something like I was holding in my hand or the quick reason why that was no longer made and what replaced it.
I think the robot will be great for easy stuff. Its going to fail for the harder stuff. Lowes may not care, because most people already assume the help one gets at these large hardware stores is limited at best. Not sure how I would like it personally. If its not as easy to use as portrayed in the video, I foresee some robot kicking in the future if something happens and the robot cannot acquire the image of a given item and/or its answer is not helpful. It will be much like training consumers to use those annoying phone trees.
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Waffle
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Post by Waffle on Oct 30, 2014 5:33:54 GMT -5
. . .
However it raises the specter of a whole new category of jobs that could become automated. I had assumed that truck drivers and warehouse workers are at serious risk these days, but store clerks surprises me. . . .
this is a little off topic, but why do you think that truck drivers are at serious risk? Every week, in my local newspaper, there are any abundance of help wanted ads for truck drivers.
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marvholly
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Post by marvholly on Oct 30, 2014 5:43:25 GMT -5
Be interesting to see how it goes. Maybe I can get accurate answers to the actual questions I ask from the robot. Do NOT get that from a human. I have been sent all over the store by several different employees whenever I ask where something is located.
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resolution
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Post by resolution on Oct 30, 2014 6:34:53 GMT -5
Love it, hope all the big retailers go that way! Will be great for small businesses. If you think it's hard to find help in those stores now wait until they only have one or two actual people working in them. The robots will be good at showing you where a specific item in the store is but when you tell it you need a way to build a bracket that can support a 2' by 4' piece of wire grid above a free standing shelving unit it's going to return a system error. Or, like the guy who came into my store today asking for a board game that 5 kids ranging in age from 6-13 would like, you'll get no help from what's essentially a walking talking store map. This looks like a really expensive single purpose machine. All it does is show you where an item is if you know the exact item you're looking for. That's neat and all, but when it comes to actual product knowledge it can't even open the jar, much less cut the mustard. It has something like Skype built in, so if the computer can't answer your question it can connect you to a person that will talk to you. So you can still talk to the expert, but instead of having a dozen experts in the store they have one sitting in a booth somewhere taking Skype calls.
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resolution
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Post by resolution on Oct 30, 2014 6:52:14 GMT -5
. . .
However it raises the specter of a whole new category of jobs that could become automated. I had assumed that truck drivers and warehouse workers are at serious risk these days, but store clerks surprises me. . . .
this is a little off topic, but why do you think that truck drivers are at serious risk? Every week, in my local newspaper, there are any abundance of help wanted ads for truck drivers. I would give the majority of truck drivers at most 20 years, based on all the videos I have seen of driverless cars in other countries. Its the same gps technology that is starting to be used on a smaller scale in warehouses. The vehicles can be any size or shape, they don't need breaks and they have much fewer accidents than human drivers. Youtube has videos of shuttle drivers at airports, factory trucks, construction trucks, even army vehicles that prevent drivers from being placed at risk.
Here is another video from a construction site in Australia, where the driverless vehicles are running 23 hours a day.
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resolution
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Post by resolution on Oct 30, 2014 7:04:21 GMT -5
I see these things as positives overall, if we can find work for the people that will be displaced. What to do with the people will be the big issue. In theory it should give us faster service in the stores and more safety on the roads, and cutting down expenses for warehousing/stocking and transportation should make things more affordable.
Generally when I go shopping I am not looking for a knowledgeable clerk to discuss what type of product I should buy. I am trying to find the aisle with the 3/4" pipe or the wasabi sauce or printer ink. So it seems to me that this would enhance customer service instead of hurting it.
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hoops902
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Post by hoops902 on Oct 30, 2014 9:29:00 GMT -5
::The robots will be good at showing you where a specific item in the store is but when you tell it you need a way to build a bracket that can support a 2' by 4' piece of wire grid above a free standing shelving unit it's going to return a system error. Or, like the guy who came into my store today asking for a board game that 5 kids ranging in age from 6-13 would like, you'll get no help from what's essentially a walking talking store map. This looks like a really expensive single purpose machine.::
This is basically what the employees are now. The people at these stores aren't typically intended to tell you how to do things, they're stockers. That's not intended as an insult, it's simply what the job is.
I've worked in this kind of store, my brother still does, and I frequent them quite often. The job is to keep the shelves stocked and be friendly to customers and help them find things. The job is not to stand in as a general contractor. They do want you to pick up some product knowledge along the way, enough to work in paint and tell customers which ones are moisture resistant, what the gloss looks like, etc.
These stores are essentially Wal-Mart for home improvement. The idea is that they are cheap and have a big selection of the things you need. You go to them when you know what you want to get it at a good price and hopefully it's a big enough store they have it in stock. You don't go into Wal-Mart and start asking the guy stocking dvd's about which movie has the most Oscar-nominated actors in it, or which one was shot by a certain director...he's just a guy stocking shelves...same thing.
ETA: I like the robot idea. These robots will probably be a lot more help than most employees. I assume at minimum they can direct me where I'm going and know if something is in stock. I can't tell you how many times I'll ask someone if they have X and the employee has no idea what X even is...even if it's in the department they stock. They're basically looking at SKUs and matching them to the boxes without worrying about what the object actually is.
I went in looking for drywall knives once and started in tools, was directed to go to wall coverings, then sent to building materials who told me to go to tools. It was in building materials. Of course each of these areas are as far apart as possible too. And of course when I go back to tools the guy looks at me with utter disgust as if I'm an idiot.
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movingforward
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Post by movingforward on Oct 30, 2014 9:52:15 GMT -5
I am little surprised at everyone's negative experiences. The Home Depot I shop at has very helpful employees. A lot of them are older retired gentlemen who are working 20 hrs a week mainly to have something to do. Most of them have done a lot of work on their own homes through the years and know more than I would ever expect from a store clerk. I also have never experienced one of them not knowing where to find X. As soon as I ask the question they automatically say halfway done aisle X or they actually walk me to the item.
I suppose robots would be fine for their intended purpose, and I assume they will still need people to stock shelves and whatnot. I do worry about the number of jobs that will be lost over the next decade or so. I don't believe the government (or tax payers) have the resources to support all of these people so we may end up with a lot more homeless individuals. I am sure some of the lost jobs will be replaced by newer positions; however, they will be more skilled labor positions and though some are definitely capable of learning these trades I fear there will be more that will lack the capacity for this type of work.
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Opti
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Post by Opti on Oct 30, 2014 10:03:47 GMT -5
See bad employers with bad business models can kill off jobs! I almost want to move this thread to P&M. After all the complaints about government, here's a brilliant example of how to structure jobs so people generally won't do better than a robot.
I wonder if it gets a computer virus or a screen goes down whether they'll just tape a piece of paper on it saying 'out of order'.
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GRG a/k/a goldenrulegirl
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Post by GRG a/k/a goldenrulegirl on Oct 30, 2014 10:52:33 GMT -5
In the Year 2525
deminmaine: let's see how many people get that reference. Headed off to see if I can buy "it".
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Opti
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Post by Opti on Oct 30, 2014 10:56:26 GMT -5
I like the year 2525!
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Ombud
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Post by Ombud on Oct 30, 2014 11:07:56 GMT -5
It has something like Skype built in, so if the computer can't answer your question it can connect you to a person that will talk to you. So you can still talk to the expert, but instead of having a dozen experts in the store they have one sitting in a booth somewhere taking Skype calls. So I'm going to sit on hold waiting for somebody to answer a phone line? And when that waits too long, they're going to ship it off shore to somebody whose accent I can barely understand and who can barely understand my accent not to mention lingo that's common here? Then physically show me? HOW is this helpful?
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justme
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Post by justme on Oct 30, 2014 13:05:52 GMT -5
I LOVE restaurants that let me order from a computer. I also choose the self-checkout lanes more often than not when they are available.
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Ombud
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Post by Ombud on Oct 30, 2014 13:13:55 GMT -5
I dunno. A self check out lane won't hands on teach me how to replace the overflow valve on my 15 yr old leaking water heater. Yes I saw it online but I still want someone to do it hands on at Osh
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happyhoix
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Post by happyhoix on Oct 30, 2014 13:32:13 GMT -5
I could see these kinds of stores replacing the stockers faster than the clerks, actually. There are already robot that move parts based on an inventory control system, the main issue would be customer safety, but they could run these robots at night when no customers or staff are around. I can see a use for a computer that you could talk to or that could scan the item you want and then direct you to the right aisle - none of the Lowes or Home Depots or Walmarts, for that matter, seem to be laid out the same way, I feel like I spend a lot of time just roaming, looking for the right aisle. If we get to the point of driverless cars, I'm not sure we would even have actual stores anymore - you could order online and they could send out a driverless vehicle to drop it off at your house. Some stores, like clothing stores, would continue because people like to try stuff on before they buy it, but if you only need a replacement toilet and a driverless car would arrive at your house with one that afternoon, I'd certainly buy it that way. I guess all the people who lose their stocker or clerk jobs at stores would need to retrain as robotics experts.
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wmpeon
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Post by wmpeon on Oct 30, 2014 13:45:36 GMT -5
I've always been impressed with my local Lowe's employees' powers to find things. I ask for twine and they rattle off the correct isle number. I ask for a small piece of plastic doohickey to do X and they take me to the single hook holding such an item 10 isles away. It's pretty impressive. I can't wait to see those robots navigating in real time. Let's see isles congested with snowplows and customer traffic. Let's see them deal with distracting voices, overhead speakers and motion-sensing Xmas toys belting out Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Let's see them move too quickly for someone who can't walk quickly, or too slowly and cause a hazard by blocking peoples' way. And let's see how sturdy they are against the expected bumping, scraping, hitting and also electronic issues. Oh yeah, this sounds....fun.
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movingforward
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Post by movingforward on Oct 30, 2014 14:26:00 GMT -5
I've always been impressed with my local Lowe's employees' powers to find things. I ask for twine and they rattle off the correct isle number. I ask for a small piece of plastic doohickey to do X and they take me to the single hook holding such an item 10 isles away. It's pretty impressive. I can't wait to see those robots navigating in real time. Let's see isles congested with snowplows and customer traffic. Let's see them deal with distracting voices, overhead speakers and motion-sensing Xmas toys belting out Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Let's see them move too quickly for someone who can't walk quickly, or too slowly and cause a hazard by blocking peoples' way. And let's see how sturdy they are against the expected bumping, scraping, hitting and also electronic issues. Oh yeah, this sounds....fun. All I can picture is the robot not being able to answer a question and there being no live person anywhere around. Customers just getting upset and walking out the door or better yet picking up a 2 X 4 and beating the robot to bits . Seriously, I guess I can picture a limited version of this where you ask where is X and it gives you the aisle number or whatever but that's about it. Sometimes you just want/need a live person! I am sick to death of calling customer service and getting those automated systems that take FOREVER! The ones where you have to say what you are calling about, etc. Drives me bat shit crazy . Then when you do get a live person it is someone in India with an accent so thick I have to ask them to repeat everything 3 times.
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haapai
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Post by haapai on Oct 30, 2014 14:40:08 GMT -5
I work as a big-box stocker. I'm always a little amused by what other people think I spend my time doing. Being a walking, talking store map occupies a tiny percentage of my time.
To replace me, you'd have to build and maintain another half-dozen dedicated single-taskers, many of them with fragile and tricky robotic arms and lifting mechanisms. I doubt that many of you would want to shop around those swarms of glorified roombas.
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zibazinski
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Post by zibazinski on Oct 30, 2014 15:52:06 GMT -5
Not unless I Could ride on one like that cat chasing a duck!
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Peace Of Mind
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Post by Peace Of Mind on Oct 30, 2014 16:28:09 GMT -5
I'd rather have a robot DO the shopping for me. If I still have to go to the store I don't care either way. I still have to deal with some form of incompetence, including my own when I'm not sure what it is I need or remember the name of the product. Will robots be able to help with that or discuss gardening and color schemes? If not, I prefer dealing with people. They'll laugh with me or at me.
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hoops902
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Post by hoops902 on Oct 30, 2014 16:29:58 GMT -5
::To replace me, you'd have to build and maintain another half-dozen dedicated single-taskers, many of them with fragile and tricky robotic arms and lifting mechanisms. I doubt that many of you would want to shop around those swarms of glorified roombas.::
Yes, but to replace you and 20 of your coworkers still only takes that same half dozen dedicated single taskers. Replacing one person who does many functions is difficult and expensive, replacing a bunch of people who all do the same general tasks is MUCH more cost effective.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Oct 30, 2014 16:56:43 GMT -5
I shop at Home Depot more than Lowes and I don't have any complaints about getting someone to help me if I need it. If anything, sometimes it seems like every 10 steps someone asks some variation of "do you need help finding anything". Maybe that particular Home Depot just has a lot of employees.
I can see myself getting more easily irritated with a robot than a human. I even get annoyed by self-checkout registers and would rather stand in a short line than use one. Maybe because I've been a cashier before and checking myself out feels like work to me. I've already worked to earn my money, I don't want to work to spend it too. Something about the idea of going into a store and dealing with one machine after another to make my purchase and never a human, just rubs me the wrong way. I guess I do like people after all.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Oct 30, 2014 17:11:06 GMT -5
I've always been impressed with my local Lowe's employees' powers to find things. I ask for twine and they rattle off the correct isle number. I ask for a small piece of plastic doohickey to do X and they take me to the single hook holding such an item 10 isles away. It's pretty impressive. I can't wait to see those robots navigating in real time. Let's see isles congested with snowplows and customer traffic. Let's see them deal with distracting voices, overhead speakers and motion-sensing Xmas toys belting out Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Let's see them move too quickly for someone who can't walk quickly, or too slowly and cause a hazard by blocking peoples' way. And let's see how sturdy they are against the expected bumping, scraping, hitting and also electronic issues. Oh yeah, this sounds....fun. I know "robot" is a term used for a huge variety of machines. But I've worked with robots before and those particular robots are some finicky beasts. Yes, they're faster and more efficient, but they pretty much need babysitters. My first thoughts reading the OP were similar to the things you mentioned. I also wondered how well they'd be able to navigate a store crowded with customers and kids not paying attention and making sudden movements, without injuring anybody.
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tskeeter
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Post by tskeeter on Oct 30, 2014 17:20:05 GMT -5
Lowe's is apparently going to pilot some robot store clerks in one of their stores. I have to admit, the robot in the video appears more helpful than most normal clerks and I wouldn't mind seeing them in my local Lowes. I love the scanning feature where you can hold up the screw you want to replace and it will scan it and take you to the right spot in the store.
However it raises the specter of a whole new category of jobs that could become automated. I had assumed that truck drivers and warehouse workers are at serious risk these days, but store clerks surprises me.
So what do you think? Would you use the robot clerk or require a human one? What do we do with all the customer service workers if they get replaced by the robots?
www.usnews.com/news/business/articles/2014/10/28/lowes-debuts-customer-service-robots-in-store
Train the to fix the robots?
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tskeeter
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Post by tskeeter on Oct 30, 2014 17:30:27 GMT -5
. . .
However it raises the specter of a whole new category of jobs that could become automated. I had assumed that truck drivers and warehouse workers are at serious risk these days, but store clerks surprises me. . . .
this is a little off topic, but why do you think that truck drivers are at serious risk? Every week, in my local newspaper, there are any abundance of help wanted ads for truck drivers. You bet. Autonomous (self driving) vehicles exist today (some are used on automotive test tracks) and are close enough to large scale application that they are legal in some states (NV, for example). GPS can provide the routing services and is capable of locating a vehicle to within inches (just like it can send a bomb down the ventilation shaft of a middle eastern building), so you don't even have to put lane locator devices into roadways. Once the regulatory obstacles are out of the way, it's a done deal. Just a scaled up version of Eldon Musk's people mover.
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haapai
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Post by haapai on Oct 30, 2014 17:54:38 GMT -5
::To replace me, you'd have to build and maintain another half-dozen dedicated single-taskers, many of them with fragile and tricky robotic arms and lifting mechanisms. I doubt that many of you would want to shop around those swarms of glorified roombas.:: Yes, but to replace you and 20 of your coworkers still only takes that same half dozen dedicated single taskers. Replacing one person who does many functions is difficult and expensive, replacing a bunch of people who all do the same general tasks is MUCH more cost effective. I'm not so sure about that. It's possible that replacing 20 of us would take 120 GRs. Remember, these are single-taskers, not multi-taskers. They all do what they do without regard for the urgency of the task. I'm perfectly capable of picking up a stray piece of merchandise, placing it under my cart, and putting it where it belongs when and if I get time to do it. Programming bots to get stray stuff to where it belongs is a bit trickier. They might have to be programmed to do a continuous sweep (i.e. looking for things that are out of place) and once they pick something up with their none-too nimble appendages, they might have to put it where it belongs before doing anything else. All of this work is performed at Amigo-speed, or less. (BTW, that's a reference to the motorized carts used by many retailers, not an ethnic slur.) I can easily imagine bots working at 1/6 the speed of a human.
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billisonboard
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Post by billisonboard on Oct 30, 2014 18:32:47 GMT -5
... What do we do with all the customer service workers if they get replaced by the robots? ... Train the to fix the robots? But if we train and employ "all" to fix the robots, why not just keep them employed as customer service workers? Reality is that only a percentage of those displaced can find employment designing, building, and repairing the machinery that replaces human beings. Otherwise, there is no reason to replace them.
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milee
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Post by milee on Oct 30, 2014 18:57:29 GMT -5
If it were legal and available, I'd be the first in line to buy a Google car. And since I'm a fairly terrible driver, I've been counting on getting a Google car when I'm in my 70s or 80s and truly a menace on the road. So trust me, I really, really, really badly want the whole driverless car thing to happen. But it may be further away than we are all hoping.
www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/10/google_self_driving_car_it_may_never_actually_happen.2.html
For starters, the Google car was able to do so much more than its predecessors in large part because the company had the resources to do something no other robotic car research project ever could: develop an ingenious but extremely expensive mapping system. These maps contain the exact three-dimensional location of streetlights, stop signs, crosswalks, lane markings, and every other crucial aspect of a roadway.
That might not seem like such a tough job for the company that gave us Google Earth and Google Maps. But the maps necessary for the Google car are an order of magnitude more complicated. In fact, when I first wrote about the car for MIT Technology Review, Google admitted to me that the process it currently uses to make the maps are too inefficient to work in the country as a whole.
To create them, a dedicated vehicle outfitted with a bank of sensors first makes repeated passes scanning the roadway to be mapped. The data is then downloaded, with every square foot of the landscape pored over by both humans and computers to make sure that all-important real-world objects have been captured. This complete map gets loaded into the car's memory before a journey, and because it knows from the map about the location of many stationary objects, its computer—essentially a generic PC running Ubuntu Linux—can devote more of its energies to tracking moving objects, like other cars.
But the maps have problems, starting with the fact that the car can’t travel a single inch without one. Since maps are one of the engineering foundations of the Google car, before the company's vision for ubiquitous self-driving cars can be realized, all 4 million miles of U.S. public roads will be need to be mapped, plus driveways, off-road trails, and everywhere else you'd ever want to take the car. So far, only a few thousand miles of road have gotten the treatment, most of them around the company's headquarters in Mountain View, California. The company frequently says that its car has driven more than 700,000 miles safely, but those are the same few thousand mapped miles, driven over and over again.
....
Another problem with maps is that once you make them, you have to keep them up to date, a challenge Google says it hasn't yet started working on. Considering all the traffic signals, stop signs, lane markings, and crosswalks that get added or removed every day throughout the country, keeping a gigantic database of maps current is vastly difficult. Safety is at stake here; Chris Urmson, director of the Google car team, told me that if the car came across a traffic signal not on its map, it could potentially run a red light, simply because it wouldn't know to look for the signal. .... Noting that the Google car might not be able to handle an unmapped traffic light might sound like a cynical game of "gotcha." But MIT roboticist John Leonard says it goes to the heart of why the Google car project is so daunting. "While the probability of a single driver encountering a newly installed traffic light is very low, the probability of at least one driver encountering one on a given day is very high," Leonard says. The list of these "rare" events is practically endless, said Leonard, who does not expect a full self-driving car in his lifetime (he’s 49).
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