Amazon’s Distribution Center Utilizes High Tech Robots

This is a great video showing the automation at an Amazon distribution center.  The use of robots to pick the product rack, send it to the packer and than back to its place in the warehouse is incredible.

These robotic shelves allow more products to be packed into a tighter space.  The process is more efficient than having humans walk around, so it also a good example of how automation can be combined with human labor to increase productivity.

It use to be that industrial robots were confined to performing extremely precise and repetitive tasks, and were separated from human workers. In recent years, however, thanks to better computer chips, algorithms, sensors, and actuators, robots have become cheaper, safer, and better able to learn new tasks quickly.

Amazon’s robots come from a company called Kiva Systems that it acquired in 2012. They are controlled by a central computer and navigate using markers on the ground.

Amazon has also begun exploring ways that it might someday automate some of the shelf-picking work at its factories.