Amazon touts Vulcan – its first robot with a sense of 'touch'

Claims human warehouse workers will still live long and prosper

Internet souk Amazon has unveiled a new robot for its warehouses and claims the machine uses a sense of "touch" to shift around 75 percent of the types of packages handled.

The robot, dubbed Vulcan, consists of two gripping pincers with conveyor belts built in and a pointed probe that's used to push items around. Amazon says that Vulcan can find the right gripping strength for an item and learn on the fly to become more efficient at stowing packages within crates.

"Vulcan represents a fundamental leap forward in robotics," said Aaron Parness, Amazon director of applied science. "It's not just seeing the world, it's feeling it, enabling capabilities that were impossible for Amazon robots until now."

Vulcan robot and its human handler at Amazon – Pic: Amazon

The first Vulcan units are already in operation in Spokane, Washington, and Hamburg in Germany, and Amazon says the system will be most useful at reaching the highest and lowest points in storage carriers - areas that humans find the most troublesome as they need either a stepladder or to crouch down, Amazon said.

Not that humans and Vulcan are going to be working together. For safety reasons the robots are kept separate from their fleshy counterparts to avoid the possibility of humans getting injured.

Parness told CNBC that the robot can work around 20 hours a day, with downtime for maintenance, but claimed it wasn't there just to put humans out of a job. Instead, workers replaced by the machines will be encouraged to take up new roles and Amazon says it has spent $1.2 billion training 350,000 workers in new skills.

Parness says the new jobs would be operating the robots, maintaining them, and would lead to an overall increase in "interesting jobs." He cited an Amazon warehouse in Louisiana where the number of human employees has not dropped but 30 percent of staff now have higher-tech jobs.

"Our vision is to scale this technology across our network, enhancing operational efficiency, improving workplace safety, and supporting our employees by reducing physically demanding tasks," Parness said.

Amazon has invested heavily in robotics in its warehouses since 2012, when it spent $775 million to acquire robotics startup Jiva. These range from Roomba-style platforms used to shift stacks of crates around to mechanized arms that use suction to pick up items and pack boxes and Amazon claims it has 750,000 robots on the workforce.

Robots have a number of advantages for Amazon, despite being expensive to purchase. They work longer hours than humans, don't require pay, are not going to unionize, and don't have to pee in bottles to make their quota, unlike human workers. ®