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 particular person” (G2P) resolution with the Kiva robots. The Kiva cell robots current movable cabinets, stocked with stock, to a stationary human picker. The human affiliate picks a particular merchandise for a particular buyer order and singulates it for cargo.
Over time, the cabinets are depleted of stock and must be replenished. The replenishment activity is at the moment completed manually. To automate the replenishment activity, Amazon developed a brand new robotic known as Vulcan, designed to select gadgets from bulk and place them onto the movable cabinets.
What makes Vulcan distinctive is that it’s geared up with power suggestions sensors and AI, giving it a way of contact. This “sense of contact” permits Vulcan to govern objects with higher precision and dexterity. In response to Amazon, Vulcan can decide and stow roughly 75% of the gadgets in Amazon warehouses, shifting them at speeds akin to human employees.
The robotic’s capabilities are anticipated to enhance operational effectivity, office security, and cut back bodily demanding duties for human staff. Vulcan’s end-of-arm tooling and sensors allow it to handle a variety of merchandise, from small devices to bigger gadgets, by making use of the suitable quantity of power.
Vulcan makes use of an arm, digicam and suction cup gripper to select gadgets 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 know-how 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 large limitations in our subject proper now,” Parness mentioned throughout his Robotics Summit keynote. “When you take a look at mobility, robots are doing again flips, however manipulation remains to be a really unsolved problem. We get confused typically between digital intelligence and bodily intelligence. We’re rightly impressed when robots beat grand masters at chess. They’re wonderful at enjoying chess, however robots nonetheless type of suck at shifting 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 likely be enabled by contact. This contains densely placing gadgets right into a padded mailer, dealing with groceries, and placing packages into supply baggage. These are issues the place you might have 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 need to be as cautious, as a result of we are able to transfer rapidly after which reply after we make contact, versus watching and watching and watching,” Parness mentioned at Robotics Summit. “And it’s a sooner response charge. It additionally permits us to fill the bins to the next stage of development dice as a result of we are able to compress gadgets. You possibly can squeeze the pillow or the t-shirt over to the facet. You possibly can’t know that forward of time all the time. So it’s essential have that power suggestions to know if what you’re pushing on is inflexible or compliant.
“It additionally helps us keep away from damaging gadgets and dropping gadgets. 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 received some medication in it. So it’s a part of all the things we do. I had an outdated mentor at NASA JPL, Brett Kennedy, who used to say industrial robots 1.0 had 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. It’s best to see my youngsters play space. If we wish to kind by that pile of junk, it’s important to have a way of contact. That’s my basic speculation.”
Amazon at the moment has a variety of different robotic choosing purposes deployed. Sparrow is at the moment choosing from totes, nevertheless it solely picks from the highest layer of the totes. Sparrow has a number of intelligence to establish the gadgets and plan the trajectories, nevertheless it (at the moment) 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 laborious for individuals to entry, in accordance with Parness. This deal with the highest rows means human employees would primarily stow gadgets on mid-level cabinets, the “energy zone,” doubtlessly lowering employee accidents, Parness famous. Amazon’s harm charges have traditionally been larger 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 growth and is now trying 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.
