Are you an Amazon warehouse employee? Then this news can make you a little bit excited. Amazon dismissed the idea of a fully automated warehouse in the near future. According to them, it will take another decade to make a warehouse fully controlled by robots.
Scott Anderson, director of Amazon Robotics Fulfillment, said that while the company is exploring a variety of automation technologies, there’s a misperception that the company will be replacing human workers with robots in the near future. He also said that the technology is at least 10 years away. Amazon is exploring a variety of technologies to automate the various steps needed to get a package to shoppers, Anderson said.
The statements come at a time when the company is under fire from the labor groups for working condition and for increasingly automating jobs and reducing its dependence on human labor.
According to Reuters, Amazon has 110 warehouses in the US, 45 sorting centers, and roughly 50 delivery stations, all of which employ more than 125,000 full-time warehouse workers. But only a fraction of the overall labor is performed by robots.
Robots are expensive to make. They only can do preprogrammed work and programming need human effort and a lot of resources. But as AI is improving day by day, robots also can do more complex than ever. The companies who are doing research in this field, Amazon is one of them. Right now Amazon uses ‘driver’ robots to carry stacks of products to human.
But who knows what the future may hold for us. I mean five years ago it is almost impossible for a normal human to think about something like google duplex or calljoy. But it is happening so we can’t deny the fact that warehouse automation can happen sooner than expected.