Amazon is close to having more robots operating inside its warehouses than humans after the e-commerce giant announced this week that it now has more than a million robots working at its facilities around the world.
Over the years, Amazon has spent billions of dollars on the development and deployment of warehouse-based robots, which handle an array of tasks once performed by human workers.
An estimated 1.1 million humans work at Amazon warehouses globally, suggesting it won’t be long before they’re outnumbered by robots.
“We’ve just deployed our one millionth robot, building on our position as the world’s largest manufacturer and operator of mobile robotics,” Scott Dresser, vice president of Amazon Robotics, said in a blog post this week.
Dresser added that it’s also introducing a new generative AI technology designed to make its fleet of robots smarter and more efficient.
The announcement follows Amazon’s unveiling in May of its new Vulcan robot, which looks like a game changer due to its ability to pick items and place them onto movable shelves. Vulcan, which is in the early stages of rollout, can operate for up to 20 hours a day, while its stowing speed is said to be a little quicker than the average human.
Amazon has always said that its robots complement the warehouse-based human workforce, with the machines performing repetitive, physically demanding and potentially hazardous tasks.
But many observers believe that the company is aiming to fully automate its warehouses, a viewpoint that gained momentum just recently when a report by Business Insider disclosed an internal document stating that robots like the new Vulcan machine are “critical to flattening Amazon’s hiring curve over the next ten years.”
The company has already admitted that advanced technologies such as AI will mean a reduced corporate workforce, with Amazon CEO Andy Jassy telling employees in a memo last month that that the company’s corporate workforce will shrink in the coming years as it deploys more AI in its operations.
It’s clear that robotics and AI are rapidly reshaping how work gets done in warehouses and beyond, with Amazon’s push toward automation indicative of a much broader shift across the industry as companies everywhere embrace new technologies for more efficient operations. As for Amazon’s warehouse workers, adapting to new roles alongside robots is becoming the new normal.
