Amazon debuts a warehouse robot with a sense of ‘touch’

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Amazon says that it has developed a new warehouse robot, Vulcan, that can “feel” some of the items it touches.

The two-armed Vulcan, which can maneuver goods inside the storage compartments Amazon has in its warehouses, uses force sensors to help it know when it makes contact with an object. One arm rearranges items in a compartment, while the second arm — which is equipped with a camera and suction cup — grabs items.

Amazon says that Vulcan was trained on physical data including force and touch feedback to pick around 75% of Amazon’s stock, and that it’s capable of self-improving over time. The robot has been deployed in Spokane, Washington, and Hamburg, Germany, where it has processed half a million orders to date.

Vulcan is only the latest addition to Amazon’s fleet of warehouse robots. It uses hundreds of thousands to fulfill customer orders across its global storage facilities. While critics allege that Amazon’s robotics investments are an effort to replace human workers, Amazon asserts that this isn’t the case, arguing robots like Vulcan simply make its warehouses safer.