In the Amazon warehouse outside of Boston, a yellow-plated, gooseneck-like mechanical arm stretched and plucked a plastic jar holding a powdered drink mix out of a yellow box. The new device rose up, spun around with a loud whirring sound and gently placed the jar a few feet away into a gray bin. It twisted again toward the yellow box and soon after grabbed a DVD case, a very different shape, before pivoting quickly again to drop the item into an adjacent bin.
These actions are executed rapidly and smoothly, just like the countless movements that workers undertake to pick and pack millions of online orders each day in warehouses across the world.
But the robotic device, known as Sparrow, is outfitted with suction cups and artificial intelligence software rather than the eyes and hands of humans. It is Amazon’s attempt to automate more of its warehousing operations by turning some of the most physically challenging and repetitive tasks over to robots, reports The Wall Street Journal (Nov. 20, 2022).
Warehouse workers pick items up, sort them and put them down millions of times a day. But Amazon is trying to get Sparrow to do something that robots have long struggled with—picking up a variety of objects as easily as humans can, as well as identifying them by characteristics such as color, shape and size.
Amazon has been criticized for the tough requirements it imposes on workers in the name of efficiency. Warehouse workers there risk of developing repetitive-stress injuries and musculoskeletal disorders (a topic in Chapter 10). Sparrow is meant to be the next step in that safety process. The robot “is going to help really transform our network in those repetitive motion challenges we have,” said Amazon’s VP.
If Sparrow can eventually on a large scale handle items as varied as vitamins, Apple watchbands and packaged board games, it could carry Amazon’s stalling logistics operations forward during a period of cost-cutting across the company. Sparrow can handle millions of items that represent about 65% of Amazon’s total inventory. The process of picking orders accounts for roughly half the labor costs at warehouses. “That really is the kind of Holy Grail and the last final frontier of automation,” said an industry expert.
Classroom discussion questions:
- What other robotic advances has Amazon conducted in the past decade? (Hint: see the Chapter 12 Global Company Profile that features Amazon)
- Will robots replace workers at Amazon centers? Why or why not?