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Companies have already used this to expand
their telephone responses to 24-hour
service and handling mundane information
queries that make up the bulk of calls.
As the technology improves (so you don’t
find yourself yelling, “NO ONE! I SAID ONE
YOU STUPID MACHINE!”) the service
can manage a greater range of services.
However, I’ve already been subjected to such
automated processes when paying for parking
at Pay and Display locations.
Some of the largest users are Pop Idol
and Big Brother who receive massive call
volumes as bored viewers demand more entertainment.
That doesn’t mean that call centres will
vanish but it does put in doubt the massive
growth predictions for employment in that
sector. Combine IVR with translation and
you have a massive new industry.
Automated storage and retrieval systems
(ASRS) are at the heart of large internet
businesses that sell real stuff, like Amazon
and Newegg (which sells computers). There
are two components to this approach, fixed
aisle and carousels/vertical lift modules.
Think of it as an extremely large and complex
vending machine. ASRS is for sub-pallet
storage. Where pallet-sized volumes are
stored, semi-automation is still possible with
conveyor belts travelling and visual displays
indicating to staff what needs to be moved
from storage onto the conveyor.
Kiva Systems, an American company, produces
such order fulfilment systems for Staples,
Walgreens, Zappos and GAP, amongst
others. “The beauty of our system,” says
Raffaello D'Andrea an engineer who designed
Kiva’s control systems, ”is that you
don't have to walk over to the shelves to get
things, the shelves come to you.”
Technological innovation here feeds into
the fledgling autonomous logistics field
where various devices would hand off from
warehouse to end-user without human intervention.
The ultimate result is a ‘lights-out’ factory
where only machines operate, transferring
components to an automated warehouse,
then extracting from that warehouse for
automated assembly and packaging before
autonomous vehicles run it up to your front
door.
FANUC, a Japanese robotics company,
has a robotics factory that builds other robots.
"Not only is it lights-out," says FANUC
vice president Gary Zywiol, "we turn off the
air conditioning and heat too."
Volvo recently successfully tested an autonomous
road train system known as ‘platooning’.
Vehicles line up behind a lead car
and then automatically monitor distance,
speed and direction of the car immediately
in front of themselves. "Platooning offers
the prospect of improved road safety, better
road-space utilisation, improved driver
comfort on long journeys and reduced fuel
consumption and hence CO 2
emissions," says
Tom Robinson, the road-train project coordinator
for Ricardo UK, one of the seven
companies behind the project.
The entire mundane process of making,
selling, distributing and post-sales support is
becoming more and more autonomous. It is
more complex than automating agriculture
but it is just as inevitable.
So what will all the new unemployed be
doing? Well someone has to design, build
and maintain all the robots we’re creating.
And then there are all the new industries
still to be developed that we can barely even
imagine.
Although, certainly, someone is imagining
it right now.
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