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According to an article this week in the Wall Street Journal and reporter Sebastian Herrera, Amazon is soon to reach an almost unbelievable milestone: the number of robots it employs in its fulfillment centers and other types of logistics facilities is close to exceeding the number of human workers it has in those same operations.
And did you know Amazon has already deployed more than one million warehouse robots of multiple types?
“Company warehouses buzz with metallic arms plucking items from shelves and wheeled droids that motor around the floors ferrying the goods for packaging,” the article this week says, adding that “In other corners, automated systems help sort the items, which other robots assist in packaging for shipment.”
That includes one of Amazon’s newer robots, called Vulcan, that has a sense of touch with its gripper that enables it to pick items from numerous shelves almost like a human.
“I Amazon Robot” indeed.
“They’re one step closer to that realization of the full integration of robotics,” said Rueben Scriven, research manager at Interact Analysis, a robotics technology research firm.
Amazon says that currently, about 75% of Amazon’s global deliveries are assisted in some way by robotics. The growing level of robotic automation has driven productivity gains at Amazon facilities, which reduces fulfillment costs, which in turn also helps the company deal with labor shortages and high turnover levels at its fulfillment centers.
But as usual in these types of robot stories, Amazon also tells the Journal that the automation is for some workers has meant replacing menial, repetitive work lifting cases with more skilled assignments managing the machines. But SCDigest notes that applies for a small percentage of those displaced by the robots.
“You have completely new jobs being created,” such as robot technicians, Yesh Dattatreya, senior applied scientist at Amazon Robotics, told the Journal, adding that some warehouse workers are being trained in mechatronics and robotics apprenticeships.
Analysis by the Journal found that the average number of employees Amazon had per facility last year, roughly 670, was the lowest recorded in the past 16 years. That, of course, should come as no surprise, given its huge investment in automation.
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 An Amazon spokesperson also notes to the Journal that “Some of Amazon’s newer facilities, such as those built for same-day delivery, have smaller employee footprints and help us deliver with greater speed.”
Of course, AI is also playing a key role here too. For example, Amazon’s Dattatreya is leading a newly created Amazon team from the company’s Bay Area innovation lab to put more advanced artificial-intelligence systems into its robotics.
Amazon’s Dattatreya is leading a newly created Amazon team from the company’s Bay Area innovation lab to put more advanced artificial-intelligence systems into its robotics.
The goal, he said, is to turn future warehouse robots into assistants that can respond to verbal commands, such as to unload a trailer.
The robotic warehouse era is surely here.
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