Amazon accelerates warehouse automation with AI and robotics

E-commerce giant Amazon said on October 22 that it is accelerating the automation of its warehouses using artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics, a move that raises questions about the future of the human workforce.

At a conference in Silicon Valley, Amazon, the second-largest employer in the US, introduced a series of new robotic arms and high-tech warehouse tools. According to Amazon, AI not only helps create innovations but also significantly shortens the development time of these technologies.

Among them is the “Blue Jay” robotic arm, which is said to be able to pick, sort, and collect items flexibly at the same workstation. The robot, which is being tested in South Carolina, is a follow-up to the “Vulcan” robot, launched earlier this year, which Amazon described as “tactile” when assisting with order processing.

According to Mr. Tye Brady, CTO of Amazon Robotics, the application of AI has helped shorten the time to design, manufacture and deploy Blue Jay by two-thirds, to just over 1 year.

He emphasized that this is the power of AI, and also stated that product development cycles will happen much faster when AI helps to increase the scale and efficiency of innovation in business operations.

Amid concerns that the increased deployment of robots and AI in warehouses will lead to job losses, Brady said Amazon has created more jobs in the US than any other company in the past decade. He stressed that these are not experiments but real tools that make workers’ jobs safer, smarter and more efficient.

However, according to The New York Times, the deployment of robots could help Amazon avoid having to hire about 160,000 more employees in the next two years, even as its online business continues to grow. This automation process is said to reduce the need to hire seasonal workers during peak periods such as the year-end shopping season./.

(TTXVN/Vietnam+)

Source: https://www.vietnamplus.vn/amazon-day-nhanh-tu-dong-hoa-tai-kho-hang-bang-cong-nghe-ai-va-robot-post1072132.vnp