Was on a plane a few days ago watching someone do this out the window 10 yards away.
- Seemed like the baggage handler was required to do a very fast cycle of <scan, toss, align, repeat next bag>. Automation seems helpful, and certainly itβs hard labor.
- This was also a young woman, in presumably a safe union job, working in a very pricey city (one of the mountain west towns that exploded). Adios union job hello robots.
Tricky ethics! Outside of picking stuff up and putting stuff down, not too many automation union-safe jobs left. Saving them from back pain is also going to be saving them from a job.
We're really focused on health and safety aspects of this job - in a repetitive stress sense, these jobs are much more dangerous than many people imagine they would be and people end up with lifelong injuries.
Generally, regulators seem to be moving in this direction as well. The EU has introduced new regulations on the total amount of weight someone can move in a shift, and the Dutch government has mandated that baggage handling move away from manual processes like this in the near future.
Despite the focus difference, do you think it's unlikely that automating baggage handlers will replace their jobs?
The regulator focus seems like it'd reduce the max allowed weight of a checked bag, not automate the baggage handler handing the checked bag. So, I don't see the similarity between the regulatory push and your product? Edit - to clarify, beyond what Dutch regulators say about Dutch markets, which are a very small subset of "regulator focus" internationally.
- Seemed like the baggage handler was required to do a very fast cycle of <scan, toss, align, repeat next bag>. Automation seems helpful, and certainly itβs hard labor.
- This was also a young woman, in presumably a safe union job, working in a very pricey city (one of the mountain west towns that exploded). Adios union job hello robots.
Tricky ethics! Outside of picking stuff up and putting stuff down, not too many automation union-safe jobs left. Saving them from back pain is also going to be saving them from a job.