Amazon: Robots spread but ‘we still need humans’

Amazon is ramping up its use of robots as revenue growth slows and the company faces pressure to cut costs.

Already about three-quarters of the packages that the e-commerce giant delivers have been touched by some sort of robotic system.

But that’s likely to reach 100% or nearly 100% in the next five years, Tye Brady, chief technologist at Amazon Robotics, told the BBC.

The company did not want to say to what extent the investments will contribute to reducing costs.

Staffers were also quick to dodge questions about how quickly machines are likely to replace their human counterparts, noting that as technology advanced, 700 new types of roles were created.

“Jobs will certainly change, but the need for people will always be there,” Brady said.

Mr. Brady was speaking at an event at the company’s robotic center near Boston, Massachusetts, where the company presented its latest suite of robots, drones and mapping technology to a panel of reporters.

The company is trialling a giant robotic arm that can pick up items before they’re boxed — a feat executives describe as a major breakthrough — and a machine that can move freely on the warehouse floor alongside people.

The first drone deliveries are scheduled to begin in the United States later this year.

“I truly believe that what we’re going to do in the next five years will eclipse anything we’ve done in the last 10 years,” said Joe Quinlivan, vice president of Robotics Fulfillment and IT. “We think it will really transform our network.”

In a way, Amazon is late to the robot party.

Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com unveiled a warehouse with just four employees nearly five years ago, while rival Walmart already has a drone delivery program in operation.

Companies throughout the supply chain are pouring money into such investments, in part because of the difficulty in finding workers, said Dwight Klappich, research vice president in Gartner’s logistics team.

“There’s a lot of innovation going on,” he said. “That’s pretty much every industry, every company of every size.”

Amazon, which reportedly warned in an internal memo last year that it could run out of employees for its U.S. warehouses by 2024, has been working on such projects for more than a decade.

It bought Boston-based robotics company Kiva Systems in 2012 to boost its efforts, while founder Jeff Bezos spoke about the company’s drone ambitions in a 2013 interview.

Amazon said it now has 520,000 mobile propulsion robots navigating the floors of its warehouses, more than double what it had in 2019. And it has installed about 1,000 of an earlier version of its robotic arm to handle packages at locations in the US and Europe sort by.

The robots, which the company unveiled Thursday, also remain in trial mode, although deployment is expected to become more widespread over the next two years.

The company hopes to be able to deliver 500 million packages annually by drone by the end of the decade, including to densely populated areas like Seattle.

But that will still be a tiny fraction of the 5 billion packages the company says it currently handles each year.

Robotics hasn’t been immune to the company’s cost-cutting focus either, as the company’s sales have slowed and concerns of an economic recession are mounting.

That year, Amazon shut down its UK drone program and canceled parts of its robotics operations, such as B. Scout, who was working on a machine that could deliver people to their homes.

“We’re perfectly aware of the macroeconomic conditions out there,” said Mr. Brady, noting that the company’s hiring freeze applies to its robotics division. But he added: “We will not relax investments”.