this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2023
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Mixed reality is pointless at the home right now. Industrially I want it for warehouse workers yesterday. Make it highlight shit they need and it’ll reduce mental load and cycle time
I haven't personally used it, but it is very much a thing in manufacturing, defense contractors at least.
It isn't cheap, but it let's them move employees between lines with little downtime and little training (the required skills were pretty set in stone though). plus it gives them the added bonus of tracking productivity on an unprecedented scale.
It can also highlight areas with energized machinery or PPE areas.
Why wouldn't signs work? Plus everyone can read them with or without headset.
Just like online, people ignore/tune out signs since most are advertising anyway.
Signs do work sometimes, but that doesn't really cover moving vehicles or overhead crane work. I work in a manufacturing plant with millions of square feet of floor space. You wouldn't believe the number of outdated signs there are.
You get forklifts now that project a light fence on the ground.
I think technology can, and should, be used to create visual, audible, and tactile health and safety warnings first and foremost. A heads up display is better used for productivity instead of safety.
That's so dystopian
If you think that's dystopian then either you don't know what dystopian means or you don't know what warehouse workers already deal with.
Ive done warehouse work. Using technology to squeeze every inch of "productivity" from a human being rather than trying to meaningfully improve their lives is dystopian.
Forklifts are dystopian, just technology squeezing out more productivity. It would be better to have to carry everything by hand, like nature intended.
That's obviously a false equivalence. Forklifts and manual pickers fulfil different roles in the warehouse. This technology would only be viable to the business if ot drastically increased the expectation on the pickers.
Forklifts also replace physical work. This headset wouldnt.
Squeezing every inch of productivity from a human is just a product of late stage capitalism and happens no matter what.
This technology, by itself, would improve the employees lives by making it so they don't have to waste their time and walk quite as much.
Could the same tech not be applied to machines instead of humans? I dont see how this would make peoples lives easier. It would just increase the expectation of how much they pick.
Yea, I totally agree that we should be making tech to get rid of tedious labor like that. I'm just saying that if a company chooses to increase its employees quota that's more just a consequence of companies putting profits over people like they do. The tech itself can be used solely to make employees lives better at less heartless companies.
The reality will undoubtedly be the first one though, which is something straight from dystopian scifi. No company is going to spend all that money on AR headsets to make their worker's lives better.