There is a new warehouse robot in Amazon This has a feeling of contact, which allows him to manage a job previously only done by humans. Amazon unveiled the robot, called Vulcan, on Wednesday to a event in Germany.
CNBC had a first exclusive preview of Vulcan in April, while it was putting objects in large yellow bins in a Spokane warehouse, Washington. An overview of the robot's “hand” reveals how it can feel the elements it touches using a sensor powered by AI to determine the precise pressure and torque need.
This innovative pliers allows Vulcan the possibility of manipulating 75% of the 1 million unique items in stock at the Spokane warehouse. Amazon used Other robotic arms Inside his warehouses since 2021, but these are based on cameras for detection and aspiration for taking, limiting the types of objects they can manage.
Vulcan can also operate 20 hours a day, according to Aaron Parness, who heads the Amazon robotics team that has developed the machine.
Aaron Parness, director of Amazon Robotics, watch Katie Tarastov of CNBC, the flu of his new robot, Vulcan, in an Amazon warehouse in Spokane, Washington, April 17, 2025.
Joseph Huerta
However, Parness told CNBC that instead of replacing people in its warehouses, Vulcan will create new, more skilled jobs that involve the maintenance, exploitation, installation and construction of robots.
When asked if Amazon would fully automate warehouses in the future, Parness said: “Not at all”.
“I don't believe in 100%automation,” he said. “If we were to make Vulcan made 100% of stiffness and choices, it would never happen. You would wait all your life. Amazon understands it.”
The objective is that Vulcan manages 100% of the storage that occurs in the upper rows of bins, which are difficult to reach for people, said Parness. Limiting workers to store on shelves halfway up, the so-called power zone, could reduce the chances of workers' injury. Amazon has long fought against injury rates much higher than those of other warehouses, although the company complaints These rates have improved considerably.
“We have a scale that we have to enter several tens of times a day during your quarter of ten hours. There is a lot of reaching. We have to rush and squat. So it's a lot of difficult bodily mechanics,” Kari Freitas Hardy, an Amazon worker in Spokane, said. “As a picker, if I had an innovation like this when I could have stayed in my power area, my days would have been so easier.”
Amazon said Vulcan works almost at the same speed as a human worker and can manage articles up to 8 pounds. It operates behind a fence, kidnapped human workers to reduce the risk of accidents.
Experts agree that humans will work alongside robots in warehouses like Amazon in the foreseeable future.
“While if you build an automated terribly complicated system and it breaks, then everything stops,” said Bill Ray, a researcher at Gartner. “Taking out the last human is so expensive. It is so disruptive. It would be a huge investment and a huge risk.”
Freitas Hardy recently went from the selection of articles to work with robots. It has been one of the 350,000 workers that Amazon said it had spent $ 1.2 billion in Upskill since 2019.
“It would be several decades of leave, to bring them in and take over, so at this stage, it is more exciting if you ask me, to see the growth potential because this is where it increases jobs in the back,” said Freitas Hardy.
Although Freitas Hardy said she was not earning more money in her new role, Amazon said that others participate in his mechatronic and robotic learning program generally receive wages increases of around 40%.
Amazon said that the team that developed Vulcan has gone from a handful of people to more than 250 employees in the three years who followed the start of the project. Amazon would not reveal how much it costs to develop Vulcan, but Parnes said it represents a great business opportunity.
“Vulcan can interact with the world in a more human way, which gives us many more process paths than we can use the automation to reduce the cost that our client pays, and the speed with which we can deliver these products to our customers,” said Parness.
Another great return on investment can come from robots that make fewer errors than humans.
“Product yields are incredibly high and product yields are incredibly expensive,” said Gartner Ray. “Some of them will be because the bad thing has been put in the box. And if you can reduce this, it's a real cost savings right away.”
Meanwhile, Amazon Humanoid robot The figure has not yet brought operational efficiency. Amazon announced in 2023 that it was testing the Bipedal Agility Robotics robot to help organize and move bins, but it has not yet deployed Digit on a large scale.
When asked if Vulcan indicates that the robots have gone from the Gimmick application to the real world, Parness said: “It doesn't matter whether the robot has legs or wheels where it is bolted on the ground. I think the thing that makes the robot useful is to have this feeling of contact for me, and I think we are just there.”
For the moment, Vulcan is only in full operation at the Spokane warehouse. Another version of Vulcan that can choose specific inventory articles is being tested in Hamburg, Germany. Amazon said that he planned to add Vulcan to more American and German facilities in 2026.
Watch the video for an in-depth look exactly how Vulcan works: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/05/06/meet-vulcan-the-first-amazon-wobot-with-a-sense-of-souch.html
