![]() ![]() If an employee breaks the plane of the curtain, the robot automatically stops. In addition to the gate, a light curtain protects the opposite side of the robot. There is only one gate, which provides strict control over who can access the robot. To enter the robot area, employees gain access through a secured gate, which positively disables the robot. This is especially important when working with large industrial robots: the best approach is to ensure appropriate access controls are implemented. Ideally, we can eliminate them with multiple engineering mitigations.” "That could be anything from limiting any risk for contact between people and the robot, tripping on a floor cable, or a sharp edge on a barrier. "We work hard to identify any potential hazards," Flannigan said. They're at the table talking with us about how we can make it a better experience for our employees."Ĭlay Flannigan, senior manager, advanced robotics, and the technical lead in the Robin program noted that when robot and safety team members assess the flow of work in Amazon facilities, they insist on solutions that will not compromise safety. "Instead, safety engineers are there every step of the way, from design and deployment to maintenance and operation. "We don't just build a robot and then say, 'Hey, safety people, I want you to get involved now,'" Brady said. ![]() To do it, they use both cutting-edge AI algorithms that make decisions in fractions of a second and high-tech cameras, sensors, and grippers.īut before Amazon could blaze that path, it first had to make sure its new robots were safe. The palletizer/depalletizer must calculate how to stack a stable pallet on the fly. Robin, for example, must calculate how to identify, move, and sort parcels that may rest atop one another as they are presented via a conveyor. Yet they play an important role in the company's drive to safely deliver the right goods to the right customers at the right time.Īlthough Robin and the palletizer/depalletizer look like other robot arms, they embed advanced technologies that will shape Amazon's robot fleet for years to come.Ĭonventional robots often do a single job - welding a section of a vehicle frame or screwing a part into place - whereas for robotic arms like Robin, few tasks are ever precisely the same. Stationary robotic arms, however, are relatively new. Robots are common in Amazon facilities, where more than 200,000 mobile units aid the flow of goods from inventory to shipping. If it sees any rips, tears, or illegible addresses, Robin transfers the package, via either conveyor or mobile robot, for employees to handle. Once it knows the ZIP code, it sorts the package onto a robotic carrier for processing. Robin, a smaller robot arm, grabs one and rotates the parcel to scan the label. ![]() On another side of the facility, a jumbled pile of soft mailers and boxes roll down a conveyor belt. There, a different palletizer/depalletizer places the totes on conveyors that guide them to employees who complete the order. From there, a truck takes it to another facility. ![]() When an employee sees a pallet is complete, they approach the immobilized robot, slip a motorized hand truck under the pallet, and route it to shipping. We take every small learning and let that inspire us to think big and build for the long term.Teaching robots to stow items presents a challenge so large it was previously considered impossible - until now. It’s a deliberate approach in which we involve our operations employees to get real-time feedback and a true understanding of how our new technology can help us optimize our sites for safety, efficiency, and to better meet our customer promise. We build on this approach to serve more and more facilities across our operations network. Once the technology demonstrates that it works well, we test the same system on another process path at the same site. This starts with testing a robot on a small process path at a designated facility, and seeing how new technology supports and works collaboratively alongside our employees. We’re testing our newest robotics systems at a number of sites, building them in a very practical way and with an approach that is unique to Amazon. It’s hard to believe how far we’ve come since the days of testing a few robots in a corner of one of our facilities. We’ve become the world’s largest manufacturer of industrial robots and have deployed more than 750,000 mobile robots across our worldwide operations. In 2022, 1 billion packages, or one-eighth of all the orders we delivered to customers worldwide, was sorted by Robin, one of Amazon’s robotic handling systems. ![]()
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