In its robotics laboratory in Westborough, on the outskirts of Boston (northeast), the electronic commerce giant Amazon manufactures the robots and develops the processes to automate its distribution centers and reduce order delivery times, a goal for which it commitment to technology and that raises questions about the future of human work in collection centers.
“What we’re going to do in the next five years is going to dwarf what we’ve done in the last 10,” says Joe Quinlivan, vice president of Amazon Robotics at the BOS27 innovation and manufacturing center.
The “Delivering the Future” project wants to turn the company that Jeff Bezos founded 28 years ago to sell books online into a pioneer in distribution, with its own technology and ‘made in USA’ production.
The technology giant has made a robot handle products with the same dexterity as a human hand.
This week, before more than a hundred invited journalists from various countries, Amazon unveiled its latest creation: “Sparrow”, a robot in the shape of a bird’s head that can detect, select and manage “millions of products”.
Equipped with cameras, it takes the products from a conveyor belt and distributes them in baskets to be packed.
“Given the variety of materials we have in our warehouses, Sparrow is a significant achievement,” says the company’s head of robotics, Tye Brady, proudly.
“Sparrow” joins other robots such as “Robin” and “Cardinal” (all named after birds), but the new device can even handle products inside packages.
About 75% of Amazon’s 5 billion annual orders are handled by some kind of robot, according to Quinlivan.
Threat or complement?
“It’s not about machines replacing people. It’s about people and machines working together collaborating to get a job done,” Brady says.
Accused of “modern slavery” by some workers, the company, with the second-largest workforce in the United States behind retail giant Walmart, has managed to prevent unionization at its facilities, except for one New York warehouse.
The UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education warns that while some technologies can alleviate the toughest tasks in warehouses, they can also contribute to “increasing the workload and pace, with new methods of controlling the workers”.
And he expressly cites Amazon and its MissionRacer program, “a video game that pits workers against each other to prepare customer orders more quickly.”
Although in the short and medium term technology will not mean a massive loss of jobs in the collection centers thanks to the growth in demand for electronic commerce, those who may suffer the most in the long run are young people, men, Latinos and the blacks.
“These workers will be disproportionately affected by technological change,” since they are “overrepresented” in this industry, particularly in the United States, warns the university center.
Latinos make up 35% of the warehouse workforce.
Own technology and drones
Amazon controls the entire technological chain: it develops computer programs, artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotic manipulation, simulation, prototype design, and even a simultaneous translator, SayHi and Babel, of more than 100 languages.
It has also decided to manufacture its robots in Westborough and North Reading, with a capacity to manufacture 1,000 units per day.
Amazon’s obsession is that the shortest possible time elapses between the moment the consumer buys the product and receives it. For this reason, the so-called “last mile” of the distribution process is of vital importance for the company’s model. The firm appeals to 275,000 distributors for 148,000 daily routes that can increase in peak periods.
By the end of this year, it will begin delivering packages with drones in less than an hour from the order in two locations in California and Texas.