Per ton, container shipping is roughly 20 times more efficient than old breakbulk shipping methods. So 95% of the labour has already been automated away.
Optimizing what to put on a pallet and in what order to maximize use of space is also a nice intellectual challenge for anyone wanting one. In real-world scenarios (esp Walmart-style retail), you have to factor in boxes of varying sizes at varying distances from where they must be loaded. Travel distance, fork-lift or walking, counts too. Then, it has to be fast enough and easy to follow to be used in a fast-paced, production environment.
Just remember to release it under Apache or GPL if you build a good one. You might benefit the economy in many ways. ;)
The Wire (season 2) gives an excellent insight into how docks are run (Baltimore). There's even a scene where some Dutch company wants to bring Rotterdam's automation to Baltimore.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 39.9 ms ] threadI'll also note for shipping that it's useful to have people to deal with problems caused by port regulators, pirates, and other odd situations.
I think this story has been on HN before, but I can't find it.
Nautilus seems good at rehashing Hacker News favorite stories.
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/transport/2012/08/pal...
Optimizing what to put on a pallet and in what order to maximize use of space is also a nice intellectual challenge for anyone wanting one. In real-world scenarios (esp Walmart-style retail), you have to factor in boxes of varying sizes at varying distances from where they must be loaded. Travel distance, fork-lift or walking, counts too. Then, it has to be fast enough and easy to follow to be used in a fast-paced, production environment.
Just remember to release it under Apache or GPL if you build a good one. You might benefit the economy in many ways. ;)