The new purported norm created by Amazon's two-day shipping hits two key groups of stakeholders — consumers and supply chain service and equipment providers — differently. How the latter respond is critically important to business success.
A robotic material handling unit zips through a global toy manufacturer's six-story distribution center. As the unit retrieves an open-top plastic container filled with freshly molded toy planes from an automatic storage and retrieval system (ASRS), sparks from a frayed electrical cable on the robot fly everywhere, igniting both the toy planes and the plastic container in which they are stored.
Baidu President Ya-Qin Zhang has a mild-mannered style at odds with his bold goals for "Apollo," the fast-growing, open-source self-driving car platform the Chinese tech giant launched in July.
The global shipping industry has come of age with more automation, game-changing technologies and the-internet-of-things. But embarking on this voyage has also made it a prime target for unforeseen, invisible, and highly destructive cyberattacks.
Wal-Mart Stores is rolling out shelf-scanning robots in more than 50 U.S. stores to replenish inventory faster and save employees time when products run out.
The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is following in the steps - or in this case, the wheels - of integrator's like UPS, FedEx and DHL by testing an autonomous delivery vehicle on rural routes, in partnership with the University of Michigan.
Traders, prepare to adapt. Wall Street is entering a new era. The fraternity of bond jockeys, derivatives mavens and stock pickers who've long personified the industry are giving way to algorithms, and soon, artificial intelligence.
Two years ago, a robot crushed a 22-year-old man to death at a Volkswagen AG factory in Germany after the maintenance worker became trapped in an area usually off-bound to humans. While this type of tragedy is still relatively rare, efforts to improve safety are intensifying as factories around the world become increasingly automated.
The robot was perched over a bin filled with random objects, from a box of instant oatmeal to a small toy shark. This two-armed automaton did not recognize any of this stuff, but that did not matter. It reached into the pile and started picking things up, one after another after another.
