Amazon relies heavily on robots in its warehouses to help workers and pick orders quickly, but the machines can't yet pack fast enough to fully replace humans in the process. However, the online retail giant is determined to make the machines more useful .
To that end, he's organizing a competition at a conference in May to see who can best build an autonomous robot that can quickly pick products from shelves and put them into boxes. This may sound like a relatively simple challenge, but it's not. The robots will have to pick up various objects while breaking as few as possible, including fragile items.
Although the winner of the competition will receive $25,000, there is also the incentive of prestige and collaboration. There is no doubt that the winning manufacturer will pique the interest of Amazon, which is looking for new technologies, especially in terms of sensitive touch for these robots.
As it may be, Amazon is taking another step towards the automated organization of its massive warehouses, and this is not necessarily bad for the human staff. Such a move could help the staff, especially during holiday periods, when product shipments worldwide are at the peak point, so one can easily imagine the huge assistance of robots especially in these cases.
