Amazon creates robots that have a sense of touch to make them more useful for warehouse work
Amazon has recently unveiled its latest innovation -- Vulcan, a robot that has a sense of touch. The company has designed these robots aiming to help in warehouse work. Amazon states, "Today at our Delivering the Future event in Dortmund, Germany, we're introducing a robot that is neither numb nor dumb. Built on key advances in robotics, engineering, and physical AI, Vulcan is our first robot with a sense of touch." This new AI-powered warehouse robot is capable of picking and storing around 75 per cent of the items typically found in the company's storage facilities — a job that was once mainly carried out by human staff.
Aaron Parness, Amazon's director of applied science, in a press release, states, "Vulcan represents a fundamental leap forward in robotics." He adds 'It's not just seeing the world, it's feeling it, enabling capabilities that were impossible for Amazon robots until now.' Amazon launches Vulcan: How does it work
Amazon has unveiled Vulcan, its most advanced warehouse robot to date — one that's not only able to pick up items, but also handle them with a level of precision and sensitivity not seen in its previous machines. While Amazon has had robots capable of grasping goods before, Vulcan is the first to successfully navigate and organise items within the company's soft, fabric-lined storage compartments. These storage pods are already transported around the warehouse by a separate fleet of robots.
Vulcan operates using a pair of robotic arms — one is designed to move items within a compartment using what Amazon describes as a mechanism resembling 'a ruler stuck onto a hair straightener.' This arm is fitted with force sensors that let the robot detect when it touches an object and adjust its speed and pressure to avoid damage. The second arm features a suction cup, enabling Vulcan to extract products from the pods. It also uses an AI-driven camera to ensure it hasn't accidentally picked up multiple items at once.
The company has emphasised that AI is deeply embedded in Vulcan's operations. It's been trained using real-world data, including touch and force inputs, and is built to learn from its mistakes. By studying how objects react to touch, Vulcan refines its movements, which Amazon believes will make it more effective over time. Is Vulcan here to take away human jobs?
Already in service at fulfilment centres in Spokane, Washington and Hamburg, Germany, Vulcan has processed over half a million orders. It's primarily tasked with retrieving items located at the top and bottom of the company's eight-foot storage units — a job that would normally require human workers to bend or climb, which Amazon claims helps reduce workplace injuries.
Parness has also addressed the concern, kind of, if Vulcan is here to take over human jobs? He says, 'Vulcan works alongside our employees, and the combination is better than either on their own.' The press release stated, "We did all this work to improve not just efficiency, but worker safety and ergonomics."
Vulcan's deployment is simply the newest example of how Amazon approaches the use of advanced technology in the workplace. Over the past 12 years, the company has introduced more than 7,50,000 robots into its fulfilment centres — all aimed at helping its employees to work more safely and efficiently, by handling the more physically demanding aspects of the job.
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