Amazon is getting closer to deploying the closest thing to a human in its fulfillment centers as it unveiled a robot that can “feel.” Its latest robotics breakthrough, though, isn’t part of a plot to replace the long-serving workers on Amazon’s factory floors.
Amazon Robotics announced the launch of Vulcan, a robotic arm that is the company’s first to have a sense of touch, following a three-year development process that leaned on the expertise of specialists from Stanford, MIT, and Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Lab.
A few hours after Vulcan was unveiled in Dortmund, Germany, Amazon Robotics’ chief technologist, Tye Brady, took to the stage at Fortune’s Brainstorm AI conference in London to reassure workers that their latest robotic assistant will be a boon for their productivity, and a saviour for their joints.
Empowered, not replaced
Amazon’s 175 global fulfilment centers have each been designed to precision. The company’s estimated 150 million square feet of floor space has been utilized to maximize its space efficiency, including the use of fabric-covered pods. Historically, that system has proved a problem for robot integration: When encountering a soft, non-resistant, flexible barrier robots either screech to an emergency stop or smash right through, because they cannot sense the barrier in a tactile way as humans do.
Vulcan, therefore, is a major breakthrough. The robot combines tactile sensors with advanced AI, allowing it to identify objects based on sight and feel. Amazon compares its latest engineering feat to a human’s ability to rifle around a drawer and identify items—keys, for example—based on touch.
The robot will be able to pick up hundreds of millions of different objects, Brady told Fortune tech correspondent Jason Del Ray.
A robot getting closer to the capabilities of a human fulfillment center worker will cause anxiety, particularly at a company that is currently the U.S.’s second-largest private employer.
If Amazon’s claims are anything to go by, however, Vulcan will become fulfilment center workers’ favorite colleague, rather than their replacer. “We put people at the center of our robotics universe,” said Brady.
Vulcan will focus on physically demanding tasks, prioritizing handling items from the top shelves of Amazon’s fulfilment centers, for example.
Amazon’s human workers, unburdened by the need to use ladders or put their bodies under undue strain from heavy overhead lifting, will be freed up to focus on more complex tasks that benefit from human judgement, the company hopes. It also allows them to spend more time in what Amazon calls the “power zone,” the ergonomic range between an employee’s shoulder and their mid-thigh, which involves the least amount of stretching and bending.
Prior to Vulcan, Amazon had introduced 750,000 robots to its factories, which help complete 75% of customer orders. Brady says the remaining 25% still represents a big number of packages that only employees can work with.
But if a Vulcan were to enter a factory with 1,000 employees, would that same factory keep all those employees afterward?
Brady is confident that there won’t be fewer employees, owing to productivity gains that will allow Amazon to move more units through its fulfilment centers as humans and robots work together.
For Amazon’s employees, it will also mean more interesting, challenging, and varied work, according to Brady.
“I will be unabashedly proud that we aim to eliminate, I mean eliminate, every menial, mundane, and repetitive job out there.”
“And if it’s repetitive, we want to automate that, because we will never run out of things to do for our employees. We want them to focus on higher-level tasks. People are amazing at using common sense, reasoning, and understanding complex problems. Why would you not use that?”
The robot arm has already made its debut in Amazon’s fulfillment center in Spokane, Washington, while a robot in Hamburg, Germany, is testing out Vulcan’s ability to pick out specific items from an inventory. Further rollouts are set for 2026 in the U.S. and Germany, before a global rollout across Amazon’s fulfillment centers.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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