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Amazon says that it has deployed its one millionth robot, with the company now positioned as the world’s largest manufacturer and operator of mobile robotics.
According to a June 30 blog post from Amazon VP of robotics Scott Dresser, the millionth robot was recently delivered to a fulfillment center in Japan. The company’s fleet of robots across the globe includes Hercules, which can lift and move up to 1,250 pounds of inventory in warehouses, and Proteus, Amazon’s first fully autonomous mobile robot, capable of navigating around employees in open areas while moving heavy carts. In early May, Amazon introduced a new robot capable of sensing the size and shape of items by touch, and announced plans in early June to test humanoid package delivery robots at its San Francisco offices.
“We started in 2012 with a single type of robot that could move inventory shelves across warehouse floors,” Dresser said. “Today, we operate a diverse fleet of robots, designed to make our employees’ jobs easier and safer, and our operations more efficient.”
Dresser also announced the launch of DeepFleet, a new generative AI model designed to coordinate and optimize the movement of robots in fulfillment centers. The company says that DeepFleet will improve travel times for Amazon’s robotic fleet by 10%, leading to “less congestion, more efficient paths, and faster processing of customer orders.”
The Wall Street Journal reported on June 30 that 75% of Amazon’s global deliveries are assisted by robotics in some way, and that the company’s fleet of robots could soon outnumber its human workers. Amazon currently employs roughly 1.56 million people, 740,000 of whom work in warehouses. In mid-June, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy also said that the company will likely cut down its workforce in the years to come, as it uses more generative AI models and agents to handle day-to-day tasks.
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