The Machine That Stops Keeps the Night Running
■ Most Boxes Move the Same Way, but Exceptions Always Appear In container unloading, most boxes come off with the same motion. Working alone in a night warehouse, Tsukamukun meets a collapsed stack of boxes leaning at an angle. Irregular or fallen loads are always mixed in. Exceptions never disappear; you design for them.
■ Stopping and Calling for Help Is Part of the Design Tsukamukun stops its arm and pulls back instead of forcing the box free. Its display switches to HELP, and a remote operator straightens the boxes through a screen. Recognizing what it cannot handle, and handing it to a person: that is exception handling.
■ Conclusion: Don't Remove People—Place Them Somewhere Far Away By morning, the log shows two calls; Tsukamukun unloaded everything else alone. Because exceptions have a path to a human, the site runs unstaffed at night. Automation is judged less by what a machine can do than by how it behaves when it can't. Only a machine that can stop can be trusted alone.
