Amazon is rolling out a robot with a sense of touch—but it won’t replace humans, the company says
Amazon approaches the deployment of the thing closest to a human in its execution centers because it has unveiled a robot which can “feel”. His latest robotics break, however, is not part of a plot to replace long -standing workers from Amazon's factory floors.
Amazon Robotics has announced the launch of Vulcan, a robotic arm which is the first of the company to have a feeling of contact, following a three -year development process which relied on the expertise of specialists in Stanford, MIT and the NASA jet propulsion laboratory.
A few hours after Vulcan was unveiled in Dortmund, Germany, the chief technologist of Amazon Robotics, Tye Brady, went on stage Fortune Brainstorm ai conference in London to reassure workers that their last robotic assistant will be a boon for their productivity and a savior for their joints.
Autonomized, not replaced
Amazon 175 World realization centers were each designed for precision. The estimated 150 million square feet of the company were used to maximize its spatial efficiency, including the use of cloves covered with fabric. Historically, this system has proven to be a problem for the integration of robots: when it encounters a soft, non -resistant and flexible barrier The robots yelled at an emergency stop or crush it throughBecause they cannot feel the barrier in a tactile way as humans do.
Vulcan is therefore a major breakthrough. The robot combines touch sensors with an advanced AI, allowing it to identify objects based on sight And feel. Amazon compares his latest engineering feat to the ability of a human to relax around a drawer and identify the articles – the keys, for example – based on touch.
The robot will be able to collect hundreds of millions of different objects, said Brady Fortune Jason del Ray technological correspondent.
A robot approaching the capacities of a worker from the human realization center will cause anxiety, especially in a company which is currently the second largest private employer in the United States.
If Amazon's statements must, however, pass Vulcan to become the favorite colleague for workers at the execution center, rather than replacement. “We put people at the center of our robotic universe,” said Brady.
Vulcan will focus on physically demanding tasks, prioritize the articles of the management of the best shelves of the Amazon realization centers, for example.
Amazon's human workers, not curved by the need to use scales or put their bodies under excessive pressure of the safeguard of the general costs, will be released to focus on more complex tasks that benefit from human judgment, hopes the company. This also allows them to spend more time in what Amazon calls the “power zone”, the ergonomic range between the shoulder of an employee and their mid-thigh, which implies the least stretching and flexion.
Before Vulcan, Amazon had introduced 750,000 robots into its factories, which contributes 75% of customer orders. Brady says that the remaining 25% still represent a large number of packages with which only employees can work.
But if a vulcan was to enter a factory with 1,000 employees, would the same factory keep all of these employees afterwards?
Brady is convinced that there will be no less employees, due to productivity gains which will allow Amazon to move more units in his execution centers while humans and robots work together.
For Amazon employees, this also means more interesting, difficult and varied work, according to Brady.
“I will be shamelessly proud that we aim to eliminate, I mean eliminating, each subordinate, banal and repetitive work there.”
“And if it is repetitive, we want to automate this, because we will never fail to do for our employees. We want them to focus on higher level tasks. People are incredible to use common sense, reasoning and understanding complex problems. Why don't you use it? “
The robot arm has already made its debut at the Amazon execution center in Spokane, Washington, while a robot in Hamburg, Germany, tests Vulcan's ability to choose specific articles of an inventory. Other deployments are scheduled for 2026 in the United States and Germany, before a global deployment in Amazon's realization centers.
This story was initially presented on Fortune.com
