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Phoenix666 writes:

Ars Technica has a longer piece on how to build automated systems:

Depictions of the future in books and film are usually influenced by what's going on at the time, reflecting social malaise, impending armageddon, or economic anxieties. The robots in classic sci-fi usually resembled humans, as most authors assumed they would eventually assist us in the same tasks humans did.

Instead, however, today we find artificial intelligence doing some of our thinking for us, but it's more often solving problems that don't need intervention from self-contained humanoid robots. The promise of autonomous robots that matched our abilities has given way to a more specific focus on tasks that are fulfilled by armies of smaller bots controlled by machine learning and algorithms running in the cloud. Their scope is more complex, but a lot less dramatic than, say, Forbidden Planet's Robby the Robot, or the replicants from Blade Runner.

Not so long ago Ars Technica looked at the uses of robotics in retail and the range of different approaches, from wheeling shelves around giant Amazon warehouses, to Domino's forthcoming airborne pizza drones. The response to that story was very positive, so we decided that we would follow up with another piece that dives even deeper into the world of automation. The first story focused on what is being done with automation; now we're going to look at how you build an automated system.

Original Submission