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* Photo: Brent Humphreys * Robots are stealing American jobs. In a 76,000-square-foot zone of the 832,000-square-foot Zappos warehouse in Shepherdsville, Kentucky, 72 robotic "drive units" organize and deliver shelves of goods—from argyle socks to handbags. People remain in charge (for now), because it takes human dexterity to pack items into a box for shipping. But the bots still have plenty to do, picking up the slack on boring tasks like shifting inventory.
The droids roll at 3 miles an hour, navigating via barcodes stuck to the floor and commands from a central server. And they're buff, able to lift half a ton.
Expect to see more swarms soon; Kiva Systems, the company that created them, is working with Staples and Gap, too. "Watching the warehouse from the ground is like seeing a choreographed dance, a concert of motion," says Mick Mountz, Kiva's CEO. "But conceptually, it's like computer-chip architecture." Funny—that's just what they said about Skynet.
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