Amazon launches new warehouses with 10 times the robots

Company insists that new machines will be used to help people with their jobs, not take them

Amazon’s ‘Sparrow’ robot (Amazon)

Amazon says that it is launching a new warehouse with ten times as many robots.

The company has been gradually increasing the amount and complexity of the robotic systems involved in sending out customers’ packages – and now says that is launching “next-generation” warehouses built on new systems. Amazon is already the world’s biggest maker of industrial robots, and they are involved in picking out items as well as sending them to customers.

The first of those new warehouses is coming to Shreveport, Louisiana, and will represent the first time that new technology is involved in every key production area of the site.

When it is fully in use, it will employ 2,500 people, as well as thousands of mobile robots and a suite of robotic arms. But Amazon has insisted that the machines will not take jobs from those human employees, instead helping with tasks that are repetitive or potentially dangerous.

A robotic arm called “Sparrow” can pick up items and send them off to be delivered to customers, for instance. And a new machine called “Proteus” is able to drive around human employees, carrying large stacks of items and distributing them.

That Proteus robot was specifically designed to be approachable to the human employees that will work alongside it, Amazon said. That includes giving it eyes to make it more friendly and allow it to indicate where it is going.

Proteus, Amazon’s first fully automated mobile robot (Amazon)

Amazon has designed the machine to be “lovable”, said Julie Mitchell, director at Amazon Robotics, and hopes that it is an argument for humans working alongside robots collaboratively. Ms Mitchell said that Proteus had been through field testing to ensure that it was approved of by Amazon’s staff, including ensuring that the beeping noises it makes as it drives around a warehouse did not become “annoying”.

Previous versions of those mobile robots have run on defined tracks around Amazon’s warehouses, and safety concerns have meant they have been kept inside of cages away from human employees. Eventually, Amazon hopes that all of its robots are safe enough to work freely alongside humans, said Ms Mitchell.

The new warehouse in Louisiana was built specifically as a home for those new robotic systems. But Amazon said that the robots themselves were built with a view to being able to retrofit existing buildings, and suggested that they would roll out elsewhere.

The robotics are part of a broad set of new technologies, largely powered by artificial intelligence, unveiled by Amazon this week. They also include new tools to help drivers find packages in their vehicles, and shopping guides that are generated by artificial intelligence and offer information about topics including buying TVs.