Amazon's new robots revolutionize automation
In a gigantic warehouse in Reading, Massachusetts (USA), I come across a pair of robots that look like ridiculous green footrests from the future. Their round eyes and satisfied smiles are drawn with light-emitting diodes. They carry small lidar sensors that, like tiny hats, scan objects and people in 3D. Suddenly, one of them plays a happy melody, his mouth begins to blink and his eyes transform into hearts. They clarify to me that this means that the robot is happy.
Proteus, as Amazon calls this machine, is not like other industrial robots, which tend to be as expressive and aware of their surroundings as real footrests would be. “Wait, why would a robot be happy?” I ask Sophie Li, a software engineer at the company, who tells me that being able to express happiness can help Proteus work more effectively around people.
Proteus transports plastic containers, filled with packages, to trucks at a human-manned loading dock. The robot is smart enough to distinguish people from inanimate objects and make its own decisions about how to avoid a box or someone in its path. But sometimes he needs to tell a person to move away, or that he needs help because he's stuck, and he does this by showing different colors with his mouth. He li recently added the heart-eye figure so that Proteus also indicates that he has completed a task as planned.
“Hopefully, Proteus will make people happy,” Li says, referring to the workers who will toil alongside the robot, moving packages from containers to trucks. “And if not, well, at least he should do what they expect of him.”
I wonder if some people don't find the robot's cheerfulness a little annoying. But it might not be a bad idea to put a friendly face on the new wave of automation that is about to sweep through Amazon's distribution centers.
Amazon bets on the use of robots in its warehouses
Proteus is part of an army of more intelligent robots that are currently joining Amazon's already highly automated distribution centers. Some of these machines, like Proteus, will work among humans. Many of them will take on tasks that people previously performed. A robot called Sparrow, unveiled in November 2022, can take individual products from storage cubicles and place them in larger plastic bins, a step toward human dexterity, a holy grail of robotics and a bottleneck in automation. of a large amount of manual work. Amazon also invested last year in a company that makes humanoid robots capable of carrying boxes.
Amazon's latest robots could spark a transformation in the balance between automation and people across the company and industry. When it implemented a large number of robots for the first time in 2012, after acquiring the startup Kiva Systems and its shelf loading robots, it redesigned its supply centers and distribution network, speeding up deliveries and capturing even more of the market. The ecommerce company would now be on the cusp of a similar change, as new robots begin to reshape warehouses and the way its employees work. Some positions will be eliminated and others will arise, as long as the business continues to grow, of course. And competitors, as always, will be forced to adapt or disappear.
A promising future for robotics at Amazon
Proteus is not the only robot being put to the test at the Reading facility, which is home to Amazon Robotics, a laboratory and foundry for the company's warehouse robots. Nearby, a small platoon of blue mobile robots, each the size of a lawnmower, undergo algorithmic choreography. I watch as they go, one by one, to large machines that check the performance of their wheels and other characteristics. Those deemed fit for service move under a passage and are placed in packaging boxes bound for Amazon distribution centers.
This visit allows me to observe the development of Amazon's industrial robots. I'm joined by Xavier Van Chau, Amazon's public relations officer, who arrived on an overnight flight from the company's headquarters in Seattle, very excited and with an impressive dose of caffeine. While Amazon Robotics engineers show me machines that will significantly shift the line between what humans can do and what they can do, my companion tells me anecdotes about employees who love their robot colleagues, or about new features related to their jobs.
Some workers at Amazon distribution centers share, of course, their own anecdotes about how the company pressures them in the name of efficiency, although the multinational assures that staff well-being is one of its main concerns. In January, US regulators reported the company for lack of workplace safety, and it has faced strikes and walkouts in several US and UK territories, as reported byThe New York Times. Leaked documents obtained by the news site Vox suggest that Amazon expects it will become increasingly difficult to find enough employees for its warehouses in the United States, due in part to high staff turnover. The accelerated adoption of robotics can help you alleviate some of the challenges posed by your human workforce.
But to replace human labor, these robots must be built. And much of that work is done by people. On a nearby production line, Amazon workers are assembling the robots, lifting huge pieces of steel with the help of mechanical arms and installing electronics, sensors and motors.
The total number of mobile robots that Amazon has manufactured for use in its warehouses has grown rapidly.
Jobs in robot production and maintenance have multiplied at Amazon since the company began using them more and more. In 2021, the company also opened a new robot manufacturing facility in Westborough, Massachusetts (USA). But the addition of manufacturing employees and engineers means that other positions at Amazon are being reworked, or disappearing altogether.
New Amazon robots enhanced with AI
Amazon's first robots, after its acquisition of Kiva, were short orange goofballs, Cro-Magnon ancestors of Proteus, that invariably followed pre-programmed routes within large areas delimited by cages. The robots moved under shelves full of different products and transported them to the operators, located at the edge of the automated zone. Humans took products to prepare customer orders and placed them in containers that were sent to be packaged for distribution.
534 / 5.000 Resultados de traducción Resultado de traducción That automated picking system allowed Amazon to store more products in the same space and deliver them to customers more quickly, helping the company rise to the top of ecommerce in the eyes of customers, investors and competitors. Between 2010 and 2020, sales on Amazon multiplied by 10, going from $34 billion to $386 billion, and its robot workforce also increased. Between 2013 and 2023, the cumulative total of robots manufactured by Amazon rose from 10,000 to 750,000.
Today, three-quarters of Amazon's products—every imaginable item you could ever need and many you probably don't—are handled at some point by one of the company's robots. The 750,000 mobile robots in Amazon's more than 300 fulfillment centers around the world date back to the first Kiva machines. Amazon also employs more than 1.3 million workers in these centers. Van Chau would not specify to what extent he expects the number of robots to be used to increase in the coming years, but noted that “it will continue to grow rapidly.”