<story><title>The return of pneumatic tubes</title><url>https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/06/19/1093446/pneumatic-tubes-hospitals/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>alexwasserman</author><text>In NYC Rsosevelt Island solved their trash problems (which plague the rest of the city) with an underground pneumatic trash network: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.atlasobscura.com&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;suck-it-roosevelt-island-s-pneumatic-trash&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.atlasobscura.com&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;suck-it-roosevelt-isla...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Buildings have a connection into which trash is sucked away to the central yard for processing. It&amp;#x27;s pretty neat and helps keep the island tidy. You don&amp;#x27;t get any of the normal huge trash piles that litter Manhattan on trash day.&lt;p&gt;Conversely, our local hospital is now using robots for deliveries. They trundle around and deliver things like meds to the nurses stations on request, and announce it with &amp;quot;Your delivery has arrived&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Just watching robots trundle around as though it&amp;#x27;s normal is an interesting slow creep towards what seemed so futuristic in Star Wars in the 70s and 80s. Now our local supermarkets (BJs and Stop and Shop) have robots that trundle around checking inventory as well.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Xophmeister</author><text>I used to live in an area with a similar system for rubbish (near Wembley Stadium, in north west London). While it worked, it suffered from a number of “quality of life” issues.&lt;p&gt;The chute terminals had quite a small aperture, with a sealed door; presumably to make it easier to create the necessary pressure differential. This happened regularly; every 30 minutes (or so) during daylight hours. It was loud. Really loud! With several terminals in a courtyard, running in a sequence, it was almost a never ending reverberation.&lt;p&gt;Of course, you can’t use them while they’re in this cycle. If anyone overfilled them — which was very easy — or ended up jamming the door open with some misshapen detritus then, try as it might, it just wouldn’t work at all. The building management were regularly seen wielding a broom, to try to force stuck loads down. Then, if you had anything that just couldn’t be made small enough for the chute, you had to use the (limited) dumpsters anyway; many did, because it was often just easier.&lt;p&gt;That’s not to say I think it wasn’t a good idea. It just needed its rough edges smoothed out a bit.</text></comment>
<story><title>The return of pneumatic tubes</title><url>https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/06/19/1093446/pneumatic-tubes-hospitals/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>alexwasserman</author><text>In NYC Rsosevelt Island solved their trash problems (which plague the rest of the city) with an underground pneumatic trash network: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.atlasobscura.com&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;suck-it-roosevelt-island-s-pneumatic-trash&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.atlasobscura.com&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;suck-it-roosevelt-isla...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Buildings have a connection into which trash is sucked away to the central yard for processing. It&amp;#x27;s pretty neat and helps keep the island tidy. You don&amp;#x27;t get any of the normal huge trash piles that litter Manhattan on trash day.&lt;p&gt;Conversely, our local hospital is now using robots for deliveries. They trundle around and deliver things like meds to the nurses stations on request, and announce it with &amp;quot;Your delivery has arrived&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Just watching robots trundle around as though it&amp;#x27;s normal is an interesting slow creep towards what seemed so futuristic in Star Wars in the 70s and 80s. Now our local supermarkets (BJs and Stop and Shop) have robots that trundle around checking inventory as well.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>fusslo</author><text>my office adjoins a factory where we produce what we engineer in the offices.&lt;p&gt;The factory has two or maybe three different types of robots delivering all sorts of things from packages to packaging to stainless steel bar.&lt;p&gt;the robots use the same walkways as the humans.&lt;p&gt;It seems more and more we are designing robots to occupy and utilize the same spaces as humans. And we&amp;#x27;re designing the robots to make the humans give way: they&amp;#x27;re slow, large, bulky, and just stop when confronted. I think it&amp;#x27;s because humans are a much better robot.&lt;p&gt;humans (generally, of course) are more agile, can route easily, and move our bodies in unexpected ways to accomplish the task (lift a box up from waist height over an obstacle for example)&lt;p&gt;though I do get a LITTLE annoyed every time I have to walk around the stupid floor mopping robot in my local stop &amp;amp; shop</text></comment>