Is it really sorting? All I see is the humanoid robot moving similarly shaped / sized packages from one conveyor belt to a platform to another conveyor belt. A little industrial automation design would be much more effective, cheaper, and faster compared to the task it is performing.
The actual sorting is typically automated with scanners reading the labels and shunting packages from one conveyor belt onto another, basically a physical sorting network.
Tasks left for human "sorters" to do are:
- put packages on conveyor belt so the scanner can read the label (as done by the robot in the video)
- deal with damaged or unreadable packages that can't be processed automatically
- when a package gets jammed and forces the conveyor belt to stop, remove the offending package before restarting
- receive packages at the other end and load them into vehicles
Generally the difficulty with all of these is dealing with variability and humans act as variability absorbers so the machines can operate smoothly.
