The data shows Amazon’s warehouse robots may not be the safest - so why does it continue to promote them? The answer may be the e-commerce giant is looking to be less reliant on human workers as it contends with nagging labor issues. The report also noted injuries at Amazon’s robotic warehouses are still more frequent than at its nonrobotic warehouses. Per an April 2022 report, the rate of serious injuries at Amazon warehouses in the U.S. Watch: Robots and the future of warehousing “Amazon’s automated robots put humans in life-threatening danger today, the effects of which could be catastrophic and the long-term effects for 80-plus workers are unknown,” said Stuart Applebaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, the same group that attempted to unionize an Amazon warehouse in Alabama in 2020. One particular incident in 2018 involving a can of bear spray landed 24 Amazon employees in the hospital, bringing renewed criticism of the company’s safety record. According to internal data shared by Reveal, the rate of serious injuries at Amazon fulfillment centers from 2016 to 2019 was 50% higher in facilities with robots than in those without. “Our vision is to automate GoCart handling throughout the network, which will help reduce the need for people to manually move heavy objects through our facility and instead let them focus on more rewarding work,” the Amazon blog post said.īut while Amazon executives have said robots “make those jobs better and safer,” the company’s own data calls that claim into question. The massive marketplace has always touted the safety benefits of its robot workers - and this occasion was no exception. It said it hopes to deploy Cardinal in fulfillment centers next year. In the blog post announcing Proteus’ release, Amazon also unveiled Cardinal, a robotic sortation arm the company is trialing with 50-pound packages. Eventually, the e-commerce giant hopes to automate the entire GoCart system network wide. But although Bert is used mainly for smaller loads or individual items, a video shows Proteus carrying large racks of products with heavier payloads.Īmazon said Proteus initially will be stationed in handling areas for GoCarts, its term for the heavy-wheeled shelves that pack its fulfillment and sortation centers. Proteus operates in a similar way, using perception and navigation tools to learn its environment. Bert is able to navigate facilities and avoid employees independently, and workers can direct it to transport goods across the warehouse. Proteus is like a heavy-duty version of Bert, a “Sesame Street”-inspired AMR that was revealed to be in testing last year. We believe Proteus will change that while remaining smart, safe and collaborative.” “Historically, it’s been difficult to safely incorporate robotics in the same physical space as people. “Proteus is our first fully autonomous mobile robot,” Amazon said in a blog post. Related: Read: Your guide to the wild world of warehouse robots Read: Amazon Prime Air drone deliveries finally getting off the ground in California By 2019, the company boasted it had 200,000 robots operating worldwide. Within the next year, it ballooned another 50% to reach 45,000. Unlike the new Proteus AMR, the AGVs followed set paths along the warehouse floor, transporting racks of goods.īy the winter 2015, Amazon’s warehouse robot fleet doubled in size to 30,000. One of the earliest use cases for Amazon robots came during the winter holiday season in 2014, when the company installed 15,000 automated guided vehicles (AGVs) across its U.S. Since then, Amazon has built thousands of robots, but it has kept them mostly separate from humans until now. A different kind of robotĪmazon Robotics was launched a decade ago following the acquisition of robotic order fulfillment company Kiva Systems for $775 million. But with an already shaky labor situation that, per a leaked memo, the e-commerce firm believes could evolve into a full-blown hiring drought by 2024, adding fully autonomous robots to the mix could have implications for plans to address its warehouse issues. In the past, Amazon has promoted its warehouse robots as companions more than competitors. Rather, it’s designed to move packages throughout the company’s warehouses alongside human workers. Proteus isn’t Amazon’s ( NASDAQ: AMZN) debut in the AMR space, but it’s the first robot the company has produced that it describes as “fully autonomous.” Proteus is unlike the other robots Amazon has released over the years that are caged off from employees. Ten years after launching its robotics division, Amazon just unveiled its most advanced autonomous mobile robot (AMR) to date - and it could shake up the warehouse workplace.
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