Spectre ops amazon11/19/2023 Critically, the patent details specify that, of the thousands of orders each day, drone delivery would only deliver a small proportion. Scratching the surface of the Silicon Valley solutionism inherent in this patent, however, reveals another story. The most publicized of these structures was widely nicknamed the ‘drone beehive’, solving ‘delivery problems’ within cities to much fanfare. For this purpose, their patents have proposed various uncanny, multi-story steel framed buildings used to process freight for delivery or collection. By locating fulfillment centers within central urban areas, inventory can be delivered more quickly or collected by customers. A patent recently filed for multi-level fulfillment centers identifies an issue with their current building typology, which typically consists of large single-story volumes located on the edge of cities. Incorporating the semi-automated management of retail facilities, Amazon subsequently turns to their warehouses. And it can be used further to plan an optimized layout before this process even begins, effectively bypassing the role of a commercial architect in favor of a process of algorithmic design. For existing spaces, CAD models of their layout can be uploaded to the management module to create a virtual inventory map, allowing the system to work in a range of environments and constraints. This module controls the entire automated process and can determine which shelves need stocking when inventory is low, track the location of replacement inventory, give instructions to mobile device units and determine an optimal unpacking sequence. But the real omnipresent agent in Amazon’s patent is the ‘management module’. They scan shelves looking for depleted inventory, place orders and unload deliveries – all to an ‘optimal schedule’. To minimize this impact “on the consumer shopping experience”, Amazon’s answer is the semi-automated restocking of shelves using mobile drive units.ĭisplay shelves are now brought to workers, who are relegated to ‘restocking stations’ while robots are configured to freely roam around a given workspace. Human input, they claim, takes too much time and interrupts customers while shopping. Amazon believes stocking shelves inside shops is impractical given the rise of 24-hour retail and an overall increase in inventory. A patent for ‘replenishing a retail facility’ shows Amazon answering the age old problem of “restocking display shelves in a timely and efficient manner”. Having eliminated cashiers, Amazon then turns its attention to shelf stackers and store managers. If we are to read a city as something mediated through a series of scalar jumps, incorporating both the human body and, these days, global connections, Amazon’s urban ambitions can be read in a similar light. And this world is moving from the invisible peripheries of our cities – the abstract spaces of logistics and anonymous warehouses – into proposals that reach the center of everyday urban space. Despite strict rules on patent illustration, they allow an appreciation of Amazon’s restless patent filings as a body of work a world in itself, a totality. To look at these patents is to glimpse the automated future Amazon aims to create. This world has included proposals for multi-level drone fulfillment centers mobile robotic warehouses augmented reality furniture inflatable data centers underwater and flying warehouse facilities infinitely expandable data centers on-demand clothing manufacturing, automated shopping with image recognition systems and the ever-present spectre of drone delivery. We’ve been treated to an Archigram-esque world of walking cities, inflatable mega-structures and roaming blimps. Over the last two years, the public release of these patents has become something of a ritualistic pantomime – one routinely covered in the design press. has filed 5,860 patents, ranging from the seemingly banal to the serially bombastic. Yet, while companies like Apple or Microsoft tinker with variations on consumer goods, it is Amazon, with their own brand of automated futurism, which seems the most intent on merging processes of machine learning with principles of everyday spatial organization. Increasingly, this intellectual property consists of research and development into artificial intelligence, producing a gold rush of patent applications in this field. An essential part of their growth strategies, the aggressive protection of intellectual property through international law has proven key to Big Tech’s oligopoly over the past twenty years. An architectural soothsayer predicting the future today could find worse places to start than sifting through patents filed by the ‘Big Five’ tech companies at the European Patent Office.
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