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Business Insider
4 days ago
- Business
- Business Insider
I visited Amazon's robot factories and got an inside look at how it builds and trains them
I started the day at the North Reading office. A lineup of Amazon's robots past and present greets visitors at the entrance. The green one at the front is Amazon's latest mobile drive unit, Proteus, which can sense objects and humans in its path and move around them. The robots get older the further along the line you go. The facility is huge, stretching 209,000 square feet. From my view on the mezzanine, I could see mobile drive units that had just been built on the assembly line. The blue robots, called Hercules, move pods of items around a fenced area of a fulfillment center. Each Hercules robot can lift a pod that weighs up to 1,250 pounds. The green robots, called Proteus, do similar tasks but move autonomously. The North Reading facility was previously home to Kiva Robotics before Amazon acquired the company in 2012. Julie Mitchell, director of robotic sortation technology at Amazon Robotics, told me how the company approaches robot design. She said that Amazon works with teams in its fulfillment centers to understand which areas could be made more efficient with automation. Robots go through early alpha testing and then beta testing before they are ready for mass production. "We work backwards from our customer needs and think about which systems will help enable better delivery and faster speeds to our customers," she said. "We look to try to develop systems that will add value within one to two years in our fulfillment network." Looking to the left, I could also see other robots being tested. On the middle floor are Pegasus robots, which transport packages around sortation centers. The yellow robotic arm below is Robin, which uses suction to pick up packages. I got a closer look at the Pegasus robots as we made our way down to the manufacturing floor. They zoomed around the floor, testing out new software updates. The Pegasus robot is an evolution of the Hercules robot, using the same base but with a conveyor belt on top. The orange robots are older, from before Amazon rebranded its Prime services to blue. I also got my first up-close look at Proteus. The eyes indicate he's spotted me. Proteus is designed to work alongside employees on a shipping dock. Those workers don't get specific training to work with robots. "It was really important to us to make Proteus intuitive to understand so the human-robot interaction is seamless," Mitchell said. "We used the eyes as a way to communicate." When we got down to the manufacturing floor, I saw this poster that had been signed by Jeff Bezos. Amazon has now built more than 750,000 mobile robots, in addition to its robotic arms and sortation systems. Erica McClosky, director of manufacturing and technical operations at Amazon Robotics, leads teams that build and test robots before they are sent to fulfillment centers. About 300 people work on the physical side of building and maintaining Amazon's robotic fleet. The majority of those employees are on the assembly line, while others receive and ship materials and test and repair robots. "We're in a very controlled, stable environment here, so we're able to, for all of our new products, continuously look at how we optimize the entire flow," McClosky said. Here, workers put together subassemblies that will be incorporated into Proteus' design. Amazon's manufacturing stations have built-in automation, too, including torque tools. "If you're supposed to install, let's say, four fasteners, it'll make sure that you only store four fasteners and that it has the right rotation," McClosky said. Employees receive parts to be installed on the robots. The parts are scanned so that they can be traced as they travel through Amazon's ecosystem. "If there were ever to be a problem, we could trace back and understand what's happening," McClosky said. Amazon sources its robotic parts globally as well as from some local suppliers. I saw one assembly line building Hercules robots and another building Proteus. Lights above each station signal green when everything is in place and red when something is wrong. The North Reading facility has four assembly lines with 10 stations each. Employees at each station complete their assembly tasks in about seven and a half minutes, using a lift assist for heavy items. The last step of the assembly process for Hercules is putting the blue cover on top. Amazon asked that I not take close-up photos of the robots without their covers on due to the sensitivity of the technology. The assembly process for Hercules takes about an hour from start to finish. When the robots are complete, they're picked up from the assembly line by this lift and placed onto the floor. Lift assists are in place in various parts of the manufacturing process so that workers don't strain to pick up heavy objects. After the robots come off the line, they take a few minutes to get their batteries charged. They then line up to be tested in these blue-fenced structures. McClosky said Amazon's testing technology is one of the biggest and most helpful innovations it's rolled out in recent years. She said that Amazon used to test its robots by filling big pods with bricks and having them drive around the factory floor for hours. "What used to take us hours for testing here on the production floor is now done in minutes," McClosky said. "It's looking at environments that it would see in the fulfillment center, so under different loads, making sure that it is fully, fully functional." Proteus has its own diagnostic center where it calibrates its cameras and sensors to maintain "clear vision," Mitchell said. Proteus uses AI to "see" the space it's navigating and decide whether it can safely navigate around an object or needs to stop moving forward. Hercules is the robot Amazon has made the most units of over the years. "It's kind of our workhorse in the fulfillment centers," McClosky said. After the robots have been charged and tested, they line up for "robot graduation." The robots actually drive themselves to the loading dock and put themselves on an individual pallet. Since Hercules can't detect humans the same way that Proteus can, this is a restricted area. They're now ready to be shipped out to fulfillment centers and be put to work. Next up, I watched a robotic arm called Robin pick up packages from a conveyor belt. Robin works in conjunction with Pegasus, the mobile robot with a conveyor belt we saw earlier. The packages I saw Robin pick up were all Amazon-branded, but the robot also frequently encounters packaging from third-party brands using Amazon's fulfillment centers. "We're constantly using AI to train Robin to see different package types, different surfaces, different types of materials that it has to grasp," Mitchell said. "We can change the way we grasp it by changing which actuator we send down to pick up the package. That helps cover the gamut of different shapes." I also saw Proteus in action, practicing transporting carts around the floor. This robotic arm, Cardinal, scans packages' labels, determines which cart to place them into, and tightly packs them in like Tetris. Cardinal works in conjunction with Proteus. "When Cardinal finishes the stacking and creates a complete container, it will signal to Proteus to come and take that container and replenish that container," Mitchell said. "The two robotic systems working together has created an end-to-end automated path from sorting to loading that container onto our trailers and our ship dock." It's a powerful machine. After the tour wrapped up, we traveled to the other Amazon Robotics facility in the Boston area. Both this facility and the one in North Reading also have corporate offices and research and development labs located directly off the manufacturing floor. Amazon views this as a competitive advantage in that it allows for a more direct feedback loop. McClosky said that engineers and manufacturing staff work "shoulder to shoulder." This facility is even bigger than the one in North Reading. Looking out from the mezzanine, it felt like the factory floor stretched on forever. Madeline Stone It covers about 350,000 square feet of space. Tye Brady, the chief technologist for Amazon Robotics, spoke about the work Amazon is doing in physical AI. Madeline Stone He compared the way Amazon is thinking about robotics and physical AI to the way people thought about the computer in the 1950s. "I think if you were to roll ahead in time, you're going to see more and more physical AI agents used as tools to help people be more human, to help people be more capable of who they are, to allow people to connect to one another more readily," he said. I got a good look at Amazon's storage and sortation robot, Sequoia, from above. Madeline Stone Sequoia is a containerized storage system that brings pods over to a station where employees pick items out of totes so that they can be shipped to customers. On the left is a traditional fabric pod that can be moved by Amazon's mobile robots and brought to employees for picking. Madeline Stone Brady said the items stored in each pod are somewhat random and chosen more so to fill the space. This is how Amazon has traditionally stored items, and it's actually what the original Kiva system did even before it was part of Amazon. Amazon's newest robot, Vulcan, can pick from these pods using a sense of touch. However, Sequoia uses plastic containers to store items instead of the yellow fabric pods. Brady pointed to a screen that displays what the robot is doing at each moment. Madeline Stone The totes have all kinds of goods, from water bottles to toys to Amazon Basics cables. "This is where automation really helps us because we can take just about any object that fits inside one of these totes and place it in there," Brady said. A unique code on each tote helps keep track of what's inside. The robotic system brings the totes to an employee work station. The conveyor belt is positioned at the optimal height for picking in order to reduce injuries. Madeline Stone Brady explained how Sequoia helps workers in fulfillment centers to pick customers' orders. "When a customer goes on and they make an order, we look at the entirety of the Amazon network, we figure out which building has the goods closest to the customer, how we can make a meaningful delivery route for that customer, and then at the right time, we'll call the right pod to a station where we can now have the goods that the customer has ordered inside this tote," he said. Sequoia can also be used to process and stow items that are just arriving at a fulfillment center. Madeline Stone "I just pick the item out and then place it into another container to be packed and processed downstream," he said. Our last stop on the tour was to see the Sparrow robotic arm. Madeline Stone Unlike the other robotic arms I saw earlier, Sparrow handles individual items rather than packages. Sparrow is responsible for consolidating items into totes. Hercules robots bring pods to the Sparrow station. Madeline Stone "The robotic system extracts the tote, presents it to the Sparrow arm," Brady said. "That arm has its own end effector on it, and what it's going to do is pick up objects and try to create a more full tote." Sparrow can pick up more than 200 million different items. Madeline Stone It uses an AI system that looks down from above to differentiate between objects, look for damage, and determine the best path to place it into a bin. "That's really the holy grail when it comes to manipulation: being able to successfully identify and manipulate a huge variety of goods," Brady said.
Associated Press
29-05-2025
- Business
- Associated Press
MassRobotics Announces Recipients of 2025 Robotics Medal Recognizing Accomplishments of Women in Robotics
BOSTON, MA / ACCESS Newswire / May 29, 2025 / MassRobotics, a leading robotics innovation organization, announced its 2025 Robotics Medal and Rising Star recipients at the IEEE ICRA conference in Atlanta. The Robotics Medal is the world's first major award to recognize the wide-ranging impact of female researchers focusing on the development of robotics around the globe. The Robotics Medal is awarded to a nominated woman researcher in robotics to recognize her impactful contributions to the field and includes a $50K prize awarded to the individual. The Rising Star Medal recognizes up-and-coming women making strides and advancing the field of robotics and includes a $5K award given to the individual. The 3rd Annual MassRobotics Robotics Medal award, sponsored by Amazon Robotics, is presented to Dr. Maja Matarić, Chaired and Distinguished Professor of Computer Science, Viterbi School of Engineering, University of Southern California,for her pioneering work in the field of socially assistive robots and for making significant advancements to the field of distributed robots and learning in human-robot systems. Dr. Tania Morimoto, Associate Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of California, San Diego, is awarded the MassRobotics Rising Star in Robotics Medal for her contributions to novel soft and flexible medical robots and human-machine interfaces designed to improve access to high-quality care. To encourage diversity in the field of robotics, Amazon established an endowment with MassRobotics in 2022 to support these annual awards. The purpose of The Robotics Medal is to not only celebrate individual achievements, but to inspire and encourage women and other underrepresented groups to participate in shaping the future of the world through robotics. 'As the founding sponsor of the Robotics Medal, we aim to recognize and honor female robotics professors around the globe who have made remarkable contributions to advancing robotics technology,' explained Tye Brady, who serves as both the chief technologist at Amazon Robotics and chairperson of MassRobotics' board. 'We are deeply grateful for the invaluable insights and educational contributions provided by both Dr. Matarić and Dr. Morimoto to our physical AI community and we're proud to support this recognition in honor of their achievements.' Since 2017, MassRobotics has grown from a Massachusetts-based incubator to a global robotics hub, helping support the adoption of robotics worldwide and providing startups with the resources needed to grow and scale. Of the current 95+ startups that MassRobotics houses at its facility in Boston, more than 50% are from out of state and 25% are from outside the U.S. MassRobotics hosts STEM and robotics initiatives specifically developed for high school women and continues to promote women in robotics through events and networking to ensure women are recognized and heard. Over the past five years the MassRobotics Jumpstart Fellowship program has graduated nearly 100 students who have since enrolled in notable universities including MIT, Harvard, Northeastern, Boston University, Stanford, Georgia Tech, University of Michigan, Purdue University, and the University of Massachusetts. Although strides are being made and women now make up 48 % of the total workforce, just 34% of the STEM workforce is made up of women, and only 16% are in engineering and robotics roles, according to the National Girls Collaborative Project. Nominations for these awards came from around the United States including Texas, Washington, Massachusetts, Illinois, Minnesota, New York, and Pennsylvania, as well as across the globe from countries including Canada, Japan, Germany, Spain, Netherlands, Switzerland, and India. Submissions spanned a wide range of robotic technology fields and areas of research, from new materials for gripping, exoskeletons and assistive technologies, human robot interaction, and motion planning. 'We were thrilled by the overwhelming number of qualified nominations we received and impressed with the diversity of robotic fields and research happening across the globe,' said Joyce Sidopoulos, cofounder at MassRobotics. 'It reflects the contributions women have made, and inspires the next generation who will make an impact in this expanding field touching nearly every industry.' The Robotics Medal and Rising Star recipients were selected by a committee of robotics experts, led by MassRobotics, which convened several times and methodically evaluated the significance, depth, and originality of technical contributions each nominee has made in the overall field of robotics. 'Robotics as a field advances most rapidly when it draws from diverse intellectual perspectives and technical approaches. The contributions of leading female researchers have been instrumental in solving some of the most challenging problems in our discipline,' said Daniela Rus, Director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) at MIT and member of the MassRobotics board. 'The Robotics Medal recognizes the exceptional scientific achievement and technical innovation that has fundamentally advanced the field.' A formal Gala awarding the medals and celebrating the recipients will be held in Boston at the MIT Samberg Conference Center on October 25, 2025. Tickets, reserved tables, and sponsorship opportunities for the event are available here. MassRobotics has created an endowment and welcomes contributions to support future cash prizes for The Robotics Medal. Contact [email protected] to learn about becoming an underwriter of The Robotics Medal. Nominations for the 2026 Robotics Medal and Rising Star are open until December 20th, 2025. More information can be found here. About MassRobotics MassRobotics is the world's largest independent robotics hub dedicated to accelerating robotics innovation, commercialization, and adoption. Our mission is to help create and scale the next generation of successful robotics and AI technology companies by providing entrepreneurs and startups with the workspace, resources, programming, and connections they need to develop, prototype, test, and commercialize their products and solutions. While MassRobotics originated and is headquartered in Boston, we reach and support robotics acceleration and adoption globally. We work with startups, academia, industry, and governments both domestically and internationally. See for details. CONTACT: Sayo Tirrell [email protected] SOURCE: MassRobotics press release
Boston Globe
07-05-2025
- Business
- Boston Globe
Amazon's newest robot gains a sense of touch
In Amazon's vast storage warehouses, such as its Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up The company Advertisement Now Vulcan can also Humans will still load many items onto the shelving pods. Vulcan will concentrate on filling cubbies at the lower and higher sections of the eight-foot-tall pods. That should spare the human workers from bending and stretching in ways that could cause repetitive stress injuries. Advertisement 'Vulcan is really good at doing that part of the job,' Dresser said. 'So we provide better work environment, safer work environment, for our employees.' While that may require fewer workers loading the pods, Amazon will add jobs in robot maintenance, Dresser said. 'As we deploy more robots, we need more skilled folks that are helping us with maintenance,' he said. So far the Vulcan robots have only been installed at a facility in Spokane, Washington, and Hamburg, Germany. The plan is to deploy thousands of the touch-sensing bots at warehouses around the world, Dresser said. The team that designed Vulcan named the bot after the Roman god of fire and blacksmithing, he said. 'The team is a builder team and they like this connotation of a forge and building something new,' Dresser said. Amazon has already manufactured more than 750,000 of its other types of robots at its facilities in Westborough and North Reading. The Amazon Robotics unit was created more than a decade ago when the company bought local startup Kiva Systems, helping stoke Aaron Pressman can be reached at
Business Mayor
07-05-2025
- Business
- Business Mayor
Amazon says new warehouse robot can ‘feel' items, but won't replace workers
Vulcan can also operate 20 hours a day, according to Aaron Parness, who heads up the Amazon Robotics team that developed the machine. This innovative gripper helps give Vulcan the ability to manipulate 75% of the 1 million unique items in inventory at the Spokane warehouse. Amazon has used other robotic arms inside its warehouses since 2021, but those rely on cameras for detection and suction for grasp, limiting what types of objects they can handle. CNBC got an exclusive first look at Vulcan in April, as it stowed items into tall, yellow bins at a warehouse in Spokane, Washington. An up-close look at the 'hand' of the robot reveals how it can feel the items it touches using an AI-powered sensor to determine the precise pressure and torque each object needs. There's a new warehouse robot at Amazon that has a sense of touch, allowing it to handle a job previously only done by humans. Amazon unveiled the robot, called Vulcan, Wednesday at an event in Germany . Aaron Parness, Director of Amazon Robotics, shows CNBC's Katie Tarasov the gripper of its newest robot, Vulcan, at an Amazon warehouse in Spokane, Washington, on April 17, 2025. Still, Parness told CNBC that instead of replacing people in its warehouses, Vulcan will create new, higher skilled jobs that involve maintaining, operating, installing and building the robots. When asked if Amazon will fully automate warehouses in the future, Parness said, 'not at all.' 'I don't believe in 100% automation,' he said. 'If we had to get Vulcan to do 100% of the stows and picks, it would never happen. You would wait your entire life. Amazon understands this.' The goal is for Vulcan to handle 100% of the stowing that happens in the top rows of bins, which are difficult for people to reach, Parness said. Limiting workers to stowing on mid-height shelves, the so-called power zone, could lower the chance for worker injuries. Amazon has long struggled with injury rates far higher than those at other warehouses, though the company claims those rates have improved significantly. 'We have a ladder that we have to step onto several dozen times a day during your ten hour shift. There is a lot of reaching. We have to lunge and squat. So it's a lot of tough body mechanics,' said Kari Freitas Hardy, an Amazon worker in Spokane. 'As a picker, if I had an innovation like this where I could have stayed within my power zone, my days would have been just so much easier.' Amazon said Vulcan is operating at about the same speed as a human worker and can handle items up to 8 pounds. It operates behind a fence, sequestered from human workers to reduce the risk of accidents. Experts agree that humans will work alongside robots in warehouses like Amazon's for the foreseeable future. 'Whereas if you build a terribly complicated automated system and it breaks, then everything stops,' said Bill Ray, a researcher at Gartner. 'Taking out the last human is so expensive. It's so disruptive. It would be a huge investment and an enormous risk.' Freitas Hardy recently transitioned from picking items to working with the robots. She's one of the 350,000 workers Amazon said it's spent $1.2 billion to upskill since 2019. 'It would be many decades off, to have them just come in and take over, so at this point it's more exciting if you ask me, to see the growth potential because that is where it does increase jobs on the back side,' Freitas Hardy said. Although Freitas Hardy said she isn't making more money in her new role, Amazon said others who participate in its Mechatronics and Robotics Apprenticeship program typically receive pay increases of about 40%. Amazon said the team that developed Vulcan has grown from a handful of people to more than 250 employees in the three years since the project began. Amazon wouldn't disclose how much it cost to develop Vulcan, but Parness said it represents a big business opportunity. 'Vulcan can interact with the world in a more human-like manner, and that gives us a lot more process paths that we can use automation to bring down the cost that our customer pays, and the speed with which we can deliver those products to our customers,' Parness said. Another big return on investment may come from robots making fewer mistakes than humans. 'Product returns are incredibly high and product returns are incredibly expensive,' Gartner's Ray said. 'Some of them will be because the wrong thing was put in the box. And if you can reduce that, that's a real cost saving straight away.' Meanwhile, Amazon's humanoid robot Digit has yet to bring operational efficiency. Amazon announced in 2023 that it was testing the Agility Robotics bipedal robot to help organize and move totes, but it's yet to deploy Digit at scale. When asked if Vulcan indicates that robots have moved from gimmick to real world application, Parness said, 'It doesn't matter if the robot has legs or wheels or it's bolted to the floor. I think the thing that makes the robot useful is having that sense of touch so that it can interact in high contact and high clutter environments. That's the tipping point for me, and I think we're right there.' For now, Vulcan is only in full operation at the Spokane warehouse. Another version of Vulcan that can pick specific items from inventory is being tested in Hamburg, Germany. Amazon said it plans to add Vulcan in more U.S. and German facilities in 2026. Watch the video for an in-depth look at exactly how Vulcan works:
CNBC
07-05-2025
- Business
- CNBC
Amazon says new warehouse robot can ‘feel' items, but won't replace workers
There's a new warehouse robot at Amazon that has a sense of touch, allowing it to handle a job previously only done by humans. Amazon unveiled the robot, called Vulcan, Wednesday at an event in Germany. CNBC got an exclusive first look at Vulcan in April, as it stowed items into tall, yellow bins at a warehouse in Spokane, Washington. An up-close look at the "hand" of the robot reveals how it can feel the items it touches using an AI-powered sensor to determine the precise pressure and torque each object needs. This innovative gripper helps give Vulcan the ability to manipulate 75% of the 1 million unique items in inventory at the Spokane warehouse. Amazon has used other robotic arms inside its warehouses since 2021, but those rely on cameras for detection and suction for grasp, limiting what types of objects they can handle. Vulcan can also operate 20 hours a day, according to Aaron Parness, who heads up the Amazon Robotics team that developed the machine. Aaron Parness, Director of Amazon Robotics, shows CNBC's Katie Tarasov the gripper of its newest robot, Vulcan, at an Amazon warehouse in Spokane, Washington, on April 17, 2025. Still, Parness told CNBC that instead of replacing people in its warehouses, Vulcan will create new, higher skilled jobs that involve maintaining, operating, installing and building the robots. When asked if Amazon will fully automate warehouses in the future, Parness said, "not at all." "I don't believe in 100% automation," he said. "If we had to get Vulcan to do 100% of the stows and picks, it would never happen. You would wait your entire life. Amazon understands this." The goal is for Vulcan to handle 100% of the stowing that happens in the top rows of bins, which are difficult for people to reach, Parness said. Limiting workers to stowing on mid-height shelves, the so-called power zone, could lower the chance for worker injuries. Amazon has long struggled with injury rates far higher than those at other warehouses, though the company claims those rates have improved significantly. "We have a ladder that we have to step onto several dozen times a day during your ten hour shift. There is a lot of reaching. We have to lunge and squat. So it's a lot of tough body mechanics," said Kari Freitas Hardy, an Amazon worker in Spokane. "As a picker, if I had an innovation like this where I could have stayed within my power zone, my days would have been just so much easier." Amazon said Vulcan is operating at about the same speed as a human worker and can handle items up to 8 pounds. It operates behind a fence, sequestered from human workers to reduce the risk of accidents. Experts agree that humans will work alongside robots in warehouses like Amazon's for the foreseeable future. "Whereas if you build a terribly complicated automated system and it breaks, then everything stops," said Bill Ray, a researcher at Gartner. "Taking out the last human is so expensive. It's so disruptive. It would be a huge investment and an enormous risk." Freitas Hardy recently transitioned from picking items to working with the robots. She's one of the 350,000 workers Amazon said it's spent $1.2 billion to upskill since 2019. "It would be many decades off, to have them just come in and take over, so at this point it's more exciting if you ask me, to see the growth potential because that is where it does increase jobs on the back side," Freitas Hardy said. Although Freitas Hardy said she isn't making more money in her new role, Amazon said others who participate in its Mechatronics and Robotics Apprenticeship program typically receive pay increases of about 40%. Amazon said the team that developed Vulcan has grown from a handful of people to more than 250 employees in the three years since the project began. Amazon wouldn't disclose how much it cost to develop Vulcan, but Parness said it represents a big business opportunity. "Vulcan can interact with the world in a more human-like manner, and that gives us a lot more process paths that we can use automation to bring down the cost that our customer pays, and the speed with which we can deliver those products to our customers," Parness said. Another big return on investment may come from robots making fewer mistakes than humans. "Product returns are incredibly high and product returns are incredibly expensive," Gartner's Ray said. "Some of them will be because the wrong thing was put in the box. And if you can reduce that, that's a real cost saving straight away." Meanwhile, Amazon's humanoid robot Digit has yet to bring operational efficiency. Amazon announced in 2023 that it was testing the Agility Robotics bipedal robot to help organize and move totes, but it's yet to deploy Digit at scale. When asked if Vulcan indicates that robots have moved from gimmick to real world application, Parness said, "It doesn't matter if the robot has legs or wheels or it's bolted to the floor. I think the thing that makes the robot useful is having that sense of touch so that it can interact in high contact and high clutter environments. That's the tipping point for me, and I think we're right there." For now, Vulcan is only in full operation at the Spokane warehouse. Another version of Vulcan that can pick specific items from inventory is being tested in Hamburg, Germany. Amazon said it plans to add Vulcan in more U.S. and German facilities in 2026. Watch the video for an in-depth look at exactly how Vulcan works:
