Amazon Hires Its First ‘Fully Autonomous’ Mobile Bot To Work At Its Warehouses
Could Amazon’s latest robot employee be its most capable yet? The e-commerce giant has welcomed ‘Proteus’, which it says is its first “fully autonomous” mobile robot.
The little green robot’s primary purpose is to carry Amazon’s tall crates of boxed goods, which it terms ‘GoCarts’. Ordinarily pushed around by human workers, the carts will now also be efficiently transported by Proteus, which slips under the crates’ cages and lifts them onto its back before wheeling the shipments to a different part of the warehouse.
Human safety is on its priority list as the robot has been programmed to steer clear of its human colleagues and use perception sensors. The robot emits a green light as it moves to keep people aware of its whereabouts.
Proteus and its robot counterparts were introduced to prevent employee injuries by doing all the heavy lifting, literally, in the warehouse.
The introduction of robots is not only for the safety of employees but also for the company’s push towards same and next-day delivery, which has set it apart from other e-commerce giants.
‘Cardinal’, another of Amazon’s new robot workers, are robotic arms that carry packages and read their labels before placing them into the appropriate carts. Amazon is also looking at developing an artificial intelligence system that can scan barcodes instead of having people manually scan them themselves.
As of now, Proteus’ official first day of work has not been announced nor has its integration of it into Amazon’s workforce.
