Um repórter da BBC/ Panorama infiltrou-se disfarçado num
armazém da Amazon no Reino Unido e analisou as condições de trabalho …
As conclusões podem ser lidas em baixo … O texto do Público,
como frequentemente acontece é baseado nos artigos Internacionais …
Mas acima de tudo, além da questão da segurança do espaço aéreo,
estes clones poderiam e poderão ser utilizados para outros “objectivos”, incluindo
diversos tipos de espionagem que podem por sériamente em questão a privacidade
de todos …
Basta lembrarmo-nos do Minority Report ….
António Sérgio Rosa de Carvalho
António Sérgio Rosa de Carvalho
“Though Amazon’s system sounds pretty much automated, it’s
not far-fetched to think that some drone delivery systems from other companies
might have an actual human on the other end guiding things. And you’d have to
believe that Amazon would build in some sort of override function where a human
could grab control of drones. The “Who’s spying on me?” question would always
loom, no matter how automated a system like this gets.”
Doug Aamoth
 |
Adam Littler went undercover as a "picker" at
Amazon's Swansea warehouse
"We are machines, we are robots, we plug our scanner
in, we're holding it, but we might as well be plugging it into ourselves",
he claimed.
"We don't think for ourselves, maybe they don't trust
us to think for ourselves as human beings, I don't know."
Amazon vai usar drones para entregar encomendas em apenas meia hora
Gigante do comércio online está a preparar novo sistema de entregas
com recurso a veículos aéreos não-tripulados
A Amazon está a preparar um sistema de entregas com recurso a drones
(veículos aéreos não-tripulados) e que demorará apenas meia hora a chegar ao
cliente após a encomenda online. Jeff Bezos, o fundador e presidente
executivo do gigante norte-americano, mostrou os protótipos, ontem, no programa
60 Minutos da CBS, e acredita que dentro de quatro ou cinco anos já será
possível entregar encomendas de pequenas dimensões através deste sistema.
O Amazon Prime Air tem um alcance de 16 quilómetros
de distância a partir dos centros de distribuição que a empresa detém nos
Estados Unidos. O drones, chamados “octocopters”, voam
directamente até à casa do cliente. “São efectivamente drones mas não
há qualquer razão para que não sejam usados como veículos de distribuição”,
disse, durante a entrevista à CBS. “Parece ficção científica, mas não é”,
afirmou, sublinhando que “ainda é cedo” para avançar com o projecto no
terreno.
Os “octocopters”, com motor eléctrico, conseguem transportar
objectos com peso até dois quilos, o que representa cerca de 86% das encomendas
entregues actualmente pela Amazon. Estes drones deslocam-se através de
coordenadas GPS e não são telecomandados. “O maior desafio é conseguir colocar
[nos veículos] toda a segurança e sistemas que precisamos para dizer: ‘Isto não
pode aterrar na cabeça de alguém que está a passear na rua’”, disse Jeff
Bezos.
Não é um projecto imediato e não
estará disponível antes de 2015, até porque a Amazon precisa de autorização da
FAA, a Administração Federal de Aviação, entidade responsável pelos regulamentos
da aviação civil nos Estados Unidos. “Se pode ser daqui a quatro ou cinco anos?
Penso que sim. Vai funcionar e vai acontecer. E vai ser muito divertido”,
garante Bezos.
A Amazon tem a visão de vender tudo a todos e já começou a fazer entregas de
produtos frescos e de mercearia em duas cidades dos EUA (Seattle e Los Angeles).
Com 225 milhões de clientes em todo o mundo, faz chegar as encomendas através de
96 centros de distribuição a nível global. O primeiro livro encomendado online
foi enviado em 1995.A ideia de utilizar drones para fins não-militares não é nova. Em Junho, um franchisado da Domino’s no Reino Unido divulgou um vídeo onde se vê o DomiCopter a entregar uma pizza. Contudo, não passa de um conceito a estudar. A tecnologia está também a ser testada no Peru, na agricultura e na arqueologia. Pode ajudar a avaliar o crescimento das culturas ou fazer uma análise cartográfica em poucos minutos. |
25 November 2013 / http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25034598
Amazon workers face 'increased risk of mental illness'
A BBC investigation into a
UK-based Amazon warehouse has found conditions that a stress expert said could
cause "mental and physical illness".
Prof Michael Marmot was shown secret filming of night shifts
involving up to 11 miles
of walking - where an undercover worker was expected to collect orders every 33
seconds.
It comes as the company employs 15,000 extra staff to cater
for Christmas.
Amazon said in a statement worker safety was its
"number one priority".
Undercover reporter Adam Littler, 23, got an agency job at
Amazon's Swansea warehouse. He took a hidden camera inside for BBC Panorama to
record what happened on his shifts.
He was employed as a "picker", collecting orders
from 800,000 sq ft of storage.
A handset told him what to collect and put on his trolley.
It allotted him a set number of seconds to find each product and counted down.
If he made a mistake the scanner beeped.
"We are machines, we are robots, we plug our scanner
in, we're holding it, but we might as well be plugging it into ourselves",
he said.
"We don't think for ourselves, maybe they don't trust
us to think for ourselves as human beings, I don't know."
Prof Marmot, one of Britain's leading experts on stress at
work, said the working conditions at the warehouse are "all the bad stuff
at once".
He said: "The characteristics of this type of job, the
evidence shows increased risk of mental illness and physical illness."
"There are always going to be menial jobs, but we can
make them better or worse. And it seems to me the demands of efficiency at the
cost of individual's health and wellbeing - it's got to be balanced."
Amazon said official safety inspections had not raised any
concerns and that an independent expert appointed by the company advised that
the picking job is "similar to jobs in many other industries and does not
increase the risk of mental and physical illness".
The scanner tracked Mr Littler's picking rate and sent his
performance to managers. If it was too low, he was told he could face
disciplinary action.
When Mr Littler worked night shifts his pay rose from the
daily rate of £6.50 per hour to £8.25 per hour.
After experiencing a ten-and-a-half-hour night shift, he
said: "I managed to walk or hobble nearly 11 miles , just short of 11 miles last night. I'm
absolutely shattered. My feet are the thing that are bothering me the most to
be honest."
Amazon said new recruits are warned some positions are
physically demanding and that some workers seek these positions as they enjoy
the active nature of the work. The company said productivity targets are set
objectively, based on previous performance levels achieved by the workforce.
Those on the night shift work a four-day week with an hour's
break per shift.
Experts have told Panorama these ten-and-a-half-hour night
shifts could breach the working time regulations because of the long hours and
the strenuous nature of the work.
Barrister Giles Bedloe said: "If the work involves
heavy physical and, or, mental strain then that night worker should not work
more than eight hours in any 24-hour period.
But Amazon said its night shift is lawful. They said they
sought expert advice to ensure the shifts "comply with all relevant legal
requirements".
Amazon said it had invested £1bn in the UK and created 5,000
permanent jobs.
It added that it relied on the good judgement of thousands
of employees. The company said: "Together we're working hard to make sure
we're better tomorrow than we are today."
Panorama: The Truth Behind The Click, BBC One, Monday 25
November at 20:30 GMT and then available in the UK on the BBC iPlayer.
 |
“Though Amazon’s system sounds pretty much automated, it’s not far-fetched to think that some drone delivery systems from other companies might have an actual human on the other end guiding things. And you’d have to believe that Amazon would build in some sort of override function where a human could grab control of drones. The “Who’s spying on me?” question would always loom, no matter how automated a system like this gets.”
Doug Aamoth
Amazon Prime Air: 5 Predictions About the Retailer’s
Delivery Drones
Delivery drones are coming, bringing a whole host of
challenges with them.
By Doug Aamoth @daamothDec. 02, 2013 / http://techland.time.com/2013/12/02/amazon-prime-air-5-predictions-about-the-retailers-delivery-drones/
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos took to 60 Minutes last night to
announce that his company is in the early stages of a delivery-by-drone system.
You can read more about the idea here but the short version
is that tiny helicopters will deliver five-pound-and-under packages to your
door within 30 minutes, as long as you live within
Assuming Amazon Prime Air eventually launches, though, here
are a handful of predictions about the system itself and delivery-by-drone
systems in general.
Amazon won’t be the first to launch a consumer
delivery-by-drone program at this scale.
You may recall the Domino’s Pizza “DomiCopter” concept that
made the rounds earlier this year. Pizza by drone? Now we’re talking. And
apparently China is well ahead of the U.S. in the delivery-by-drone department,
with a company called SF Express reportedly testing a system “built for
delivering packages to remote areas,” reports Quartz.
Here in the U.S., expect something like this Domino’s
experiment to take off (pun intended) first. The stakes are much lower: We’re
talking about mediocre pizza that in the event of a drone failure or
mis-delivery can be redelivered by an actual driver relatively quickly.
Domino’s has enough brick-and-mortar locations to provide a meaningful
failsafe, in other words.
What happens if this Amazon drone botches your
delivery? Will the company then send out a driver from its distribution center
to hand-deliver the stick of deodorant you ordered or will the company simply
apologize and ship it out normally?
UPS, FedEx and the USPS will complain about unfair
competition.
Well, the USPS will definitely complain. If UPS and FedEx
are smart, they’ll just build their own drones for delivering small packages.
This type of system could conceivably work well for the USPS, of course, given
that your daily mail delivery generally weighs less than five pounds, but I
can’t imagine the post office pulling something like this together in a timely
fashion. Especially a system that can reliably deliver postal mail to a secure
location like a mailbox day after day. As for UPS and FedEx, you have to
believe both these companies are either already working on delivery-by-drone
systems or they’re seriously researching them.
One bad
delivery will make for big headlines and an even bigger PR nightmare.
Mark my words: Amazon will make thousands of drone
deliveries without incident, and then one drone will drop a package in a
swimming pool or, as Bezos worries, hit someone in the head and it’ll be
endless fodder for news outlets (ours included – sorry). Can’t you just see
Congress getting involved, too? Summoning Bezos to Washington and eliciting
dumbed-down explanations of how the Internet, e-commerce and delivery drones
work?
People will get all whipped up about privacy.
Amazon may not have to deal with this too much if the first
point I make up above comes true. People may be comfortable with delivery
drones by the time Amazon Prime Air launches. But there will undoubtedly be a
certain subset of people at some point in time who get bent out of shape about
the idea of drones flying around and delivering packages. Though Amazon’s
system sounds pretty much automated, it’s not far-fetched to think that some
drone delivery systems from other companies might have an actual human on the
other end guiding things. And you’d have to believe that Amazon would build in
some sort of override function where a human could grab control of drones. The
“Who’s spying on me?” question would always loom, no matter how automated a
system like this gets.
City deliveries will be tough.
Doug Aamoth / TIMEFor the record, I buy a LOT of stuff from
Amazon and I love the idea of this drone delivery system. But I’m trying to
figure out how this would work for me. I live in the middle of Boston on a
narrow street with a steep incline that’s blanketed overhead by power lines.
There’s nowhere except a thin strip of sidewalk for a drone to drop a package
in front of my house, yet we have a nice, enclosed breezeway for FedEx, UPS and
the mailman to leave packages.
I have a tiny, tiny plot o’ land in the back of my house,
but for most of the year, there’s a big patio umbrella covering about 80% of
the land-able surface area. Ideally, Amazon’s drone would instead drop packages
on this flat rooftop that sits outside my third-floor home office (seen in the
above photo), but I wonder if that’d even be possible. The drone would have to
be smart enough to understand that the GPS coordinates I give it correspond to
a rooftop that’s two stories up off the ground, not the actual ground below it.
—
All these predictions aside, the big takeaway should be that
these delivery-by-drone systems will be commonplace within the next decade.
There are more than a few kinks to work out, but rest assured that Amazon won’t
be the only company with such a system in place. Like it or not, you’ll be
looking out your window and seeing package-toting drones buzzing around your
neighborhood like common sparrows before you know it.
Simon Usborne
Monday 2 December 2013 / http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/faceless-drones-wont-solve-amazons-pr-problem-8978188.html
Faceless drones won't solve Amazon's PR problem
Ten miles in 30 minutes? A
teenager on a scooter could do that in less time
Amazon is in a tricky spot, PR-wise, on its busiest day of
the year (its UK site took 41 orders per second on this day last year). The
retailer is facing unprecedented scrutiny of journalists exposing working
conditions (read on); calls for a boycott by MPs not impressed by its
imaginative tax arrangements ; and the wrath of gamers who will receive their
Playstation 4’s after Christmas.
Either in response to a rare run of Amazon-bashing - or by
coincidence - Jeff Bezos, the company’s mercurial boss, last night revealed a
fanciful vision of a future in which drones might deliver your stuff in 30
minutes. The video, given huge prominence on the CBS 60 Minutes program in the
US, comes more than six months after Domino’s Pizza pulled exactly the same
stunt. But when you’re Bezos nobody minds and, by morning, your story is
everywhere.
First, the suggestion that the drone story might not be a PR
stunt. Really? Give it five years, Bezos says. That’s five years to work out a
way to serve people who happen to live within
Also, ten miles in 30 minutes? A teenager on a scooter could
do that in less time. But then a drone doesn’t demand minimum wage (Amazon
warehouse workers get a bit more). Given some of the recent coverage of the
store’s pay and working conditions, its vision of an unmanned future is
especially timely.
A significant proportion of the thousands of people at its
Swansea warehouse appear to be journalists. I went there in October to assess the retailer’s impact on the former
industrial towns where it tends to set up shop. Then, last week, BBC Panorama
got in, undercover, to add to plenty of earlier reporting on tough regime (its
reporter said workers there were “like robots…”).
Yesterday, The Observer, acknowledging it had been scooped
by Panorama, ran an excellent story by Carole Cadwalladr, who also managed to
get undercover work in Swansea, and wrote similar things, as well as this:
“I wonder for a moment if we have committed the ultimate
media absurdity and [Panorama’s] undercover reporter… has secretly filmed me
while I was secretly interviewing him.”
He hadn’t, as it happened, but it’s no coincidence that
people have questions about how a company this big works - to understand the
thinking outside the box. And it’s not only a conversation here. Amazon workers
in Germany have gone on strike over pay and the company is facing fierce
resistance in France to the threat it poses the independent book trade.
Amazon responded to the BBC film with a lengthy statement
and a series of videos of its happiest “associates”. Longer term, however, it
may yet have to rethink it’s marketing strategy. For 15 years in this country
Amazon has triumphed simply thanks to the convenience and reliability of its
service. But it will have to do more now, in its tax dealings as well as
working conditions, to maintain that confidence. Faceless drones probably
aren’t the answer.
|
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário