In January the company was called out by US regulators for poor workplace safety and it has faced industrial action and walkouts in several US states and the UK. Some workers in Amazon’s fulfillment centers have of course shared their own anecdotes about the company pushing them hard in the name of efficiency, although the company maintains staff welfare is a top concern. While Amazon Robotics engineers show off machines that will significantly shift the line between what humans and machines can do, my chaperone supplies a stream of anecdotes about workers who love their robot coworkers or their new robot-related roles.Īmazon's Proteus robot can detect when a person is in its path and act to avoid a collision. I am accompanied by Xavier Van Chau from Amazon public relations, who arrived on a red-eye from the company’s Seattle headquarters and is highly enthusiastic and impressively caffeinated. The visit provides a rare glimpse of how Amazon’s develops its industrial robots. Those declared fit for service then trundle under a walkway and into packing crates destined for Amazon fulfillment hubs. I watch as they drive, one by one, into large machines that test the performance of their wheels and other features. Nearby, a small platoon of blue mobile robots, each about the size of a push lawn mower, are going through some algorithmic choreography. Proteus isn't the only robot being put through its paces at the Reading facility, which houses Amazon Robotics, a laboratory and foundry for the company's warehouse robots. Li recently added the heart eyes to let Proteus also signal when it has completed a task as planned. But sometimes it needs to tell someone to move out of the way-or that it is stuck, which it does by showing different colors with its mouth. The robot is smart enough to distinguish people from inanimate objects and make its own decisions about how to navigate around a box or person in its path. Proteus carries suitcase-sized plastic bins filled with packages over to trucks in a loading bay that is also staffed by humans. Sophie Li, a software engineer at Amazon, explains that being able to express happiness can help Proteus work more effectively around people. “Wait, why would a robot be happy?” I ask. Proteus, as Amazon calls this machine, is not like other industrial robots, which are generally as expressive and aware of their surroundings as actual footstools. This means, I am told, that the robot is happy. Suddenly, one of them plays a chipper little tune, its mouth starts flashing, and its eyes morph into heart shapes. They sport small lidar sensors like tiny hats that scan nearby objects and people in 3D. Their round eyes and satisfied grins are rendered with light emitting diodes. In a giant warehouse in Reading, Massachusetts, I meet a pair of robots that look like goofy green footstools from the future.
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