And what are the chances that the packers who are complaining now, will be complaining then that their jobs were taken away and they want it back? Pretty damn high, I'd say.

If all you're given to drink is dirty water, and you complain about it, that doesn't mean you want nothing to drink. It means you want something better to drink.

Amazon bought a company called Kiva Systems that builds warehousing systems where robots bring the shelving units to the human packers. It's really neat:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWsMdN7HMuA

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiva_Systems

So essentially this system eliminates the up to 15 miles of walking that each worker does per day. Amazon paid $775m for Kiva, and the cost of fitting out each warehouse with the Kiva system can't be cheap... The cost to pay an army of people to walk 15 miles per day must add up real quick!

It'll take a long time. Observe that:

1) Unemployment is high and shows no signs of structural reduction, and minimum wage remains flat.

2) Salaries for computer programmers are at an all-time high, when you can recruit them.

3) Energy and materials costs continue to increase.

It doesn't make economic sense to have a lot of highly-paid engineers building resource-intensive robots when you can hire people to do the same jobs.

This is the most correct reply in all the comment section. I work in operatioa consulting for warehouses and previously worked for an automation company. Very, very few companies are willing to pay more for automation. A lot of times, it just doesn't make sense. Even if there will be a projected return on investment in a few years its a hard sell.