Into a giant warehouse in Reading, Massachusetts, I meet some robots that look like goofy green footstools from the future. Their round eyes and contented grins are displayed with light-emitting diodes. They have tiny lidar sensors like little hats that scan nearby objects and people in 3D. Suddenly one of them plays a happy tune, his mouth starts blinking and his eyes change to heart shapes. This means, I’m told, that the robot is happy.
Proteus, as Amazon calls this machine, is not like other industrial robots, which are generally just as expressive and aware of their environment as real footstools. “Wait, why would a robot be happy?” I ask. Sophie Li, a software engineer at Amazon, explains that being able to express happiness can help Proteus interact more effectively with people.
Proteus carries suitcase-sized plastic bins full of packages to trucks in a loading bay also manned by humans. The robot is smart enough to distinguish humans from inanimate objects and make its own decisions about how to navigate any box or person in its path. But sometimes he needs to tell someone to get out of the way – or that he’s stuck, which he does by showing different colors with his mouth. Li recently added the heart eyes to also let Proteus signal when it completes a task as planned.
“Proteus will hopefully make people happy,” says Li, referring to the workers who will toil alongside the robot to load packages from bins onto trucks. “And if not, well, at least it should do what they expect.”
I wonder if some people actually find the robot’s glee a little annoying. But maybe it’s not a bad idea to put a friendly face on the new wave of automation that’s about to sweep through Amazon’s fulfillment centers.
Proteus is part of an army of smarter robots currently rolling into Amazon’s already heavily automated fulfillment centers. Some of these machines, like Proteus, will work among humans. And many of them are taking over tasks that were previously done by humans. Introduced in November 2022, a robot called Sparrow can take individual products from storage bins and place them in larger plastic bins — a step toward human dexterity, a holy grail of robotics, and a bottleneck in the automation of much manual work. Amazon also invested last year in a startup that enables humanoid robots to carry boxes.
Amazon’s latest robots could spark a company-wide and industry-wide shift in the balance between automation and humans. When Amazon first rolled out large numbers of robots after acquiring startup Kiva Systems and its shelf-carrying robots in 2012, the company redesigned its fulfillment centers and distribution network, accelerating deliveries and bringing in even more customers. The e-commerce company may now be on the verge of a similar shift, with the new robots already beginning to reshape fulfillment centers and the way its employees work. Certain jobs will disappear and new ones will emerge, as long as the company continues to grow. And competitors, as always, will be forced to adapt or perish.
Thanks to Amazon
Fulfilling future
Proteus isn’t the only robot being put through its paces at its Reading facility, which is home to Amazon Robotics, a lab and foundry for the company’s warehouse robots. Nearby, a small pack of blue mobile robots, each about the size of a push lawnmower, perform an algorithmic choreography. I watch as they drive large machines one by one testing the performance of their wheels and other functions. Those declared fit for service then roll under a walkway and into crates destined for Amazon fulfillment hubs.
The visit offers a rare glimpse into how Amazon develops its industrial robots. I’m joined by Xavier Van Chau of Amazon public relations, who arrived red-eyed from the company’s headquarters in Seattle and is very enthusiastic and impressively high in caffeine. While Amazon Robotics engineers show off machines that will significantly shift the line between what humans and machines can do, my supervisor delivers a stream of anecdotes about employees loving their robot colleagues or their new robot-related roles.
Of course, some employees at Amazon’s fulfillment centers have shared their own anecdotes about the company pushing them hard in the name of efficiency, even though the company makes sure that the well-being of its employees is a top priority. In January, the company was slammed by US regulators for poor workplace safety and faced industrial action and strikes in several US states and the UK. Leaked documents obtained by Vox show that Amazon expects it will become more challenging to find enough people to hire as warehouse workers in the US, in part due to high employee turnover. Accelerating adoption of robotics could help the company mitigate some of the challenges facing the human workforce.
But to replace human labor, these robots must be built. And much of that work is done by people. At a nearby production line, Amazon workers are assembling robots, lifting large pieces of steel using mechanical arms and installing electronics, sensors and motors.
Robot manufacturing and maintenance jobs have multiplied at Amazon since it began ramping up its use of robots. The company also opened a new robot-making manufacturing facility in Westborough, Massachusetts, in 2021. But the addition of production workers and engineers means that other jobs at Amazon will change or disappear altogether.
Artificial evolution
Amazon’s first robots, after its acquisition of Kiva, were low-slung orange brutes — Cro-Magnon ancestors of Proteus — blindly following pre-programmed routes within large enclosed areas. The robots rolled under shelves of cards filled with various products and carried them to human pickers at the edge of the automation zone. The people packed products to assemble customer orders and placed them in bins that were sent for packing and shipping.
That automated pick-up system allows Amazon to store more goods in the same space and move them to customers faster, propelling the company to the pinnacle of e-commerce in the eyes of customers, investors, and competitors. Between 2010 and 2020, revenue on Amazon increased tenfold from $34 billion to $386 billion, and the number of robots also boomed. Between 2013 and 2023, the cumulative number of robots made by Amazon grew from 10,000 to 750,000.
Today, three-quarters of all Amazon products — every conceivable item you could need and many you probably don’t — are handled at some point by one of the company’s robots. The 750,000 mobile robots in more than 300 Amazon fulfillment centers around the world date back to the first Kiva machines. Amazon also employs more than 1.3 million workers at these locations. Amazon’s Van Chau declined to say how it expects the number of robots it uses to grow in the coming years, but says it will “continue to grow very rapidly.”
