Amazon unveils its latest warehouse robot
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Amazon has unveiled “Sparrow,” a new intelligent robotic system that aims to streamline the fulfillment process by moving individual products before packaging.
Unlike the retail giant’s previously deployed robotic arms, which include “Cardinal” and “Robin,” Amazon claims the Sparrow arm can identify about 65% of its product inventory without human assistance.
Sparrow uses computer vision and artificial intelligence (AI) to recognize and process millions of items, streamlining the process and saving human energy, as the company says Amazon employees around the world have picked, stowed or packed about 5 billion packages – or more than 13 million packages per day.
Why is Amazon betting on robotics?
“Robotics technology allows us to work smarter, not harder, to work efficiently and securely,” an Amazon spokesperson said in a statement. blog post announce the news.
“Working with our employees, Sparrow will take on repetitive tasks, allowing our employees to spend their time and energy on other things, while also promoting safety.”
Sources have indicated that the retail giant is in dire need of robotic intervention.
Leaked internal investigation, originally reported by Vox (opens in new tab)claimed Amazon would run out of staff willing to work in its warehouses by 2024 if it doesn’t change its labor practices.
“If we continue as usual, Amazon will exhaust the available labor supply in the US network by 2024,” the study said.
Amazon has long been betting on robotics. In 2012, it made a major investment to improve productivity in the supply chain by acquiring Kiva, a robotics company whose technology is still heavily used ten years later.
Robotics don’t take over human jobs, they create them, if we are to believe Amazon’s claims.
The company estimates that more than 700 new categories of jobs have been created in its operations to date thanks to the deployment of automated technology
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