Amazon is trialling humanoid robots in its US warehouses, in the latest sign of the tech giant automating more of its operations.
Amazon wants to use robots with arms and legs, called Digit, to help workers do their jobs better. They say it’s to make things easier for their customers. Some people are worried this might lead to job losses. A group called the union thinks Amazon has been treating their workers like machines for a long time.
Amazon says their robots have actually created many new jobs, about 700 different kinds. They have over 750,000 robots working together with humans. These robots do tasks that are repeated a lot.
The head of Amazon’s robotics team, Tye Brady, says that people are very important in the process of getting orders ready and sent out. He doesn’t think that machines will completely replace humans in the warehouses. He believes that people bring a special kind of thinking and problem-solving that robots can’t do.
Legs not wheels
Rather than using wheels to move, Digit walks on two legs. It also has arms that can pick up and move packages, containers, customer orders and objects.
Scott Dresser of Amazon Robotics told the BBC this allowed it to “deal with steps and stairs or places in our facility where we need to move up and down”.
But he said the robot was a prototype and the trial was about seeing whether it could work safely with human employees.
“It’s an experiment that we’re running to learn a little bit more about how we can use mobile robots and manipulators in our environment here at Amazon,” he said.
Mr Dresser suggested that the fears over human jobs being replaced didn’t match what had happened at Amazon.
“Our experience has been these new technologies actually create jobs, they allow us to grow and expand. And we’ve seen multiple examples of this through the robots that we have today.
“They don’t always run unfortunately and we need people to repair them,” he said.
Amazon has ramped up its use of robots in recent years, as pressure has grown to cut costs.
Last year it announced it was trialling a giant robotic arm that can pick up items. It already uses wheeled robots to move goods around its warehouses, and it has started using drones for delivery in two US states.
SOURCE:BBC