Amazon Patents Employee Tracking Wristband

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rgMekanic

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A newly discovered patent filed for by Amazon in 2016, details a wristband designed to keep track of employees in warehouses. The bracelet would emit ultrasonic sound pulses which would be picked up be receivers in the shelving units and elsewhere, not only giving the employees position in the warehouse, but also showing where their hand is positioned.

From stores that watch you to see what you buy so you don't need a cashier, to tracking employees location and hand position, not to mention selling you speakers to spy on you. I think it's safe to say Bezos is getting a little creepy.

“Existing approaches for keeping track of where inventory items are stored … may require the inventory system worker to perform time consuming acts beyond placing the inventory item into an inventory bin and retrieving the inventory item from the inventory bid, such as pushing a button associated with the inventory bin or scanning a barcode associated with the inventory bin. … Accordingly, improved approaches for keeping track of where an inventory item is stored are of interest.”
 
So this is under the guise of saving time tracking inventory...hmm. How do you guarantee the correct item was put in the correct location in the first place? Just because an employee's hands move toward a certain shelf doesn't mean they had the correct product.

Seems like a "solution" that will not address the real issues.

Plus, employee tracking is kind of creepy. I could see this being massively abused ("X employee moved their hands toward Y container when they were supposed to be at Z container, clearly they must have stolen something!")
 
MavericK said:
So this is under the guise of saving time tracking inventory...hmm. How do you guarantee the correct item was put in the correct location in the first place? Just because an employee's hands move toward a certain shelf doesn't mean they had the correct product.
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You have to make something up so people will believe that this is its purpose, kind of like how google home/alexa is a way to get a mic into every ones home and allow those 3 letter agencies to have access to your data.
 
Almost certainly this is to make sure employees aren't storing items improperly in their pockets. That's the only thing that makes sense.
 
Honestly, where we have our warehouse at work, our inventory system tracks items very good, as long as the people who pick the items to bring them to the lab actually bring them and don't accidentally drop them off at another warehouse location while they are picking things. Sending a group of inventory control to search a 1.2 million sq ft warehouse is a lot of manpower and time to find like a box of CFP2s . (Granted they know which locations to check, but it's taken days before, or things are never found)

So I could def. see an actual use for this.
 
So basically a device for mass collecting time motion study stats. Might make a difference in warehouse design in the next 10 years.
 
Depends on how they use the tech... but I imagine it would be pretty awesome in an evacuation for example.
Then again given their rep... they're probably screwing their workers for all they have before they drop dead form over work..
 
Now all they neednto do is have it give the wearer a good electric shock when they do something wrong. Put something on the wrong shelf? ZAP. A minute over on your lunch break? ZAP. What? You're trying.. To... Take off... Your wrist strap? ZAPPPPPPPPPP
 
sadsteve said:
Only the ones stupid enough to keep the bracelets on! :)
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What you mean they won't be locked on like handcuffs? ;) Actually though I thought of that, but in the stress of the situation people tend to forget things like that. Anyway I imagine the next step is to chip them like a dog...then you'll need a knife to cut it out (and I've read, probably here, that some companies are chipping though voluntarily I gather)...actually I was surprised they didn't just do this already.
 
If the boss wants to fire some uppity employee who asked for a raise or was in the bathroom more than twice a day, all they have to do is mess with a little bit of data for clear evidence the employee was stealing.

Once everything is left to sensor data, you can do a lot of things.
 
mnewxcv said:
Now all they neednto do is have it give the wearer a good electric shock when they do something wrong. Put something on the wrong shelf? ZAP. A minute over on your lunch break? ZAP. What? You're trying.. To... Take off... Your wrist strap? ZAPPPPPPPPPP
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3c3fc498c9e0a48f1d8da7cab2dad8cf.jpg
 
Tweak42 said:
So basically a device for mass collecting time motion study stats. Might make a difference in warehouse design in the next 10 years.
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I would honestly lke to believe that will be it's only use, but...
 
I'd be willing to bet this is two-fold:

  1. It enables some safety measures for the robots they've been using, removing the necessity for them to have line-of-sight at all times.
  2. It tracks workers movements so they can build a better profile for the next generation of robots and improve the arrangement of items on the shelves to reduce the search time.

If anyone in a physical job doesn't believe this is the new paradigm, they are in for a rude surprise. The people designing the systems and making the decisions about how to move forward are not the ones doing those physical jobs. As such, the input from the soon-to-be-displaced workers is only considered in so far as necessary to make improvements to the systems.
 
Interesting to see if this improves efficiency but a bit creepy. Definitely some privacy concerns involved.
 
MavericK said:
So this is under the guise of saving time tracking inventory...hmm. How do you guarantee the correct item was put in the correct location in the first place? Just because an employee's hands move toward a certain shelf doesn't mean they had the correct product.

Seems like a "solution" that will not address the real issues.

Plus, employee tracking is kind of creepy. I could see this being massively abused ("X employee moved their hands toward Y container when they were supposed to be at Z container, clearly they must have stolen something!")
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Hospitals have been using these devices for years. wearing one right now actually. every employee in our department is continuously tracked.

badge.jpg
 
This could get VERy interesting if it tracks length of travel and speed:eek::oops::ROFLMAO:
 
MavericK said:
I suspect it doesn't track your hand movements?
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No, the amount of sensors installed to just do location tracking is ridiculous, not sure how they are going to do this in a cost effective manner in a warehouse setting, unless the wristband just integrates a g sensor with location based sensor and the software infers a bin location based on that.
 
motomonkey said:
No, the amount of sensors installed to just do location tracking is ridiculous, not sure how they are going to do this in a cost effective manner in a warehouse setting, unless the wristband just integrates a g sensor with location based sensor and the software infers a bin location based on that.
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Ultrasonic sound pulses using external sensors in the shelves/racks is what the post says.
 
Maybe they didn't see how well Fitbit is already tracking people? I mean, why reinvent the wheel?! :)
 
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