Amazon is opening new automation alternatives by deploying its first robots that leverage power and contact sensing to enhance materials dealing with duties.
One of many traditional purposes for robots at Amazon warehouses is centered across the “items to individual” (G2P) answer with the Kiva robots. The Kiva cellular robots current movable cabinets, stocked with stock, to a stationary human picker. The human affiliate picks a selected merchandise for a selected buyer order and singulates it for cargo.
Over time, the cabinets are depleted of stock and must be replenished. The replenishment activity is presently performed manually. To automate the replenishment activity, Amazon developed a brand new robotic known as Vulcan, designed to select objects from bulk and place them onto the movable cabinets.
What makes Vulcan distinctive is that it’s outfitted with power suggestions sensors and AI, giving it a way of contact. This “sense of contact” permits Vulcan to control objects with higher precision and dexterity. In accordance with Amazon, Vulcan can choose and stow roughly 75% of the objects in Amazon warehouses, transferring them at speeds corresponding to human staff.
The robotic’s capabilities are anticipated to enhance operational effectivity, office security, and cut back bodily demanding duties for human workers. Vulcan’s end-of-arm tooling and sensors allow it to handle a variety of merchandise, from small devices to bigger objects, by making use of the suitable quantity of power.
Vulcan makes use of an arm, digital camera and suction cup gripper to select objects from storage pods. | Credit score: Amazon Robotics
Aaron Parness, Director of Utilized Science at Amazon Robotics, joined Steve Crowe, Govt Editor of The Robotic Report, to debate the expertise behind Vulcan throughout a keynote throughout final week’s Robotics Summit and Expo in Boston. Parness defined the significance of contact and power sensing to the way forward for robotics at Amazon.
Parness’ crew has mentioned “power is the language of manipulation.”
“[Force sensing] is crucial to how we work together with the world. It’s one of many massive limitations in our subject proper now,” Parness mentioned throughout his Robotics Summit keynote. “Should you take a look at mobility, robots are doing again flips, however manipulation continues to be a really unsolved problem. We get confused generally between digital intelligence and bodily intelligence. We’re rightly impressed when robots beat grand masters at chess. They’re superb at enjoying chess, however robots nonetheless type of suck at transferring the items on the board. And that’s the bodily intelligence. That’s the place [the people in this room have] plenty of alternative to make advances.”
Aaron Parness (left) mentioned how power sensing improves robotic manipulation at Robotics Summit & Expo 2025. Credit score: Jeff Pinette
Parness believes mentioned there are a selection of recent purposes that will probably be enabled by contact. This contains densely placing objects right into a padded mailer, dealing with groceries, and placing packages into supply baggage. These are issues the place you’ve a number of bodily contact, the place you want the following wave of robotics.
“[A sense of touch] permits us to go sooner so we don’t should be as cautious, as a result of we are able to transfer rapidly after which reply once we make contact, versus watching and watching and watching,” Parness mentioned at Robotics Summit. “And it’s a sooner response fee. It additionally permits us to fill the bins to the next stage of development dice as a result of we are able to compress objects. You may squeeze the pillow or the t-shirt over to the aspect. You may’t know that forward of time all the time. So that you must have that power suggestions to know if what you’re pushing on is inflexible or compliant.
“It additionally helps us keep away from damaging objects and dropping objects. It helps us with merchandise eligibility. You don’t grip a physics textbook that’s very heavy with the identical quantity of power as you do a skinny cardboard field that’s bought some medication in it. So it’s a part of every little thing we do. I had an outdated mentor at NASA JPL, Brett Kennedy, who used to say industrial robots 1.0 have been dumb and numb. They didn’t really feel something, and so they didn’t have a mind.
“That’s OK for lots of duties, proper? In case you are welding a robotic, you are able to do that uninteresting, harmful, soiled, repetitive activity with no need to really feel the world. However we would like them to work together in extremely cluttered environments. You need to see my children play space. If we need to kind by means of that pile of junk, you need to have a way of contact. That’s my basic speculation.”
Amazon presently has quite a lot of different robotic selecting purposes deployed. Sparrow is presently selecting from totes, but it surely solely picks from the highest layer of the totes. Sparrow has a number of intelligence to establish the objects and plan the trajectories, but it surely (presently) doesn’t require a way of contact.
Amazon has one other robotic known as Cardinal, designed to fill a cart with packages. The important thing for Cardinal is to get the cart as full as potential. Parness believes Cardinal may benefit from a way of contact to assist it maximize the cart load sooner or later.
Vulcan goals to automate the stowing of things in higher bin rows, that are arduous for individuals to entry, in accordance with Parness. This give attention to the highest rows means human staff would primarily stow objects on mid-level cabinets, the “energy zone,” probably decreasing employee accidents, Parness famous. Amazon’s damage charges have traditionally been increased in comparison with different warehouses, though the corporate states these charges have decreased significantly.
Vulcan represents the primary of the low-hanging fruit purposes for higher power and contact sensing. The Amazon robotics crew developed their understanding of contact sensing integration with the Vulcan improvement and is now seeking to increase this to different goal purposes within the warehouse.
For now, Vulcan is just in full operation at Amazon’s warehouses in Spokane, Washington, and Hamburg, Germany.
