Amazon has announced the arrival of Proteus, its first fully autonomous mobile warehouse robot. It is the latest addition to its warehouse automation efforts. The company presented Proteus before the world through a video that flaunts some of its dexterity in handling things.
In the video, the warehouse robot slides under a cart, lifts it up, and moves it effortlessly. It also shows that Proteus can navigate safely with its human colleagues in the same space. It has the ability to stop its busy movement when a person comes and stands before it.
Some of its previous warehouse robots were kept in a separate physical space without any human presence as they were not considered to be safe to incorporate with their human counterparts.
The new Proteus robots have “advanced safety, perception, and navigation technology.” In the video, we can see that a green light shines in front of them as they go about from place to place. When it detects a human presence close by, it stops and resumes its movement only after the person retreats.
A leading name in the robotics race, Amazon has been ardently thrusting towards automating its office work under a program called ‘Hands off the Wheel’. It is a great propagator of AI to automate repetitive jobs while transferring employees to more creative roles.
Amazon currently has more than 200,000 mobile robots working inside its warehouse system. These robots are working alongside umpteen human employees. They are successfully using this swarm of robots to fulfill the unceasing need for speedy deliveries.
Amazon acquired Kiva Systems, a Massachusetts-based young robotics company, in 2012 for $775 million. It produced a new breed of mobile robots to enhance Amazon’s packing and shipping efficiency. It later changed its name to Amazon Robotics LLC. Amazon is sometimes criticized for its schema to form a future where the only humans that would be working inside warehouses would be those who fix robotic errors and replacements.
Though the automation of jobs poses a critical and gigantic impact on the US labor force, (Amazon employs more than 1.1 million Americans today), Amazon is finding great success in inventory management through robot technology.
Read about Amazon’s household robot here.
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