Amazon is testing humanoid robots to “free up” employees.

In the latest indication that the internet giant is automating more of its processes, Amazon is testing humanoid robots in its US warehouses.

“Freeing employees up to better deliver for our customers” was the stated motivation for the decision by Amazon.

It stated that it was putting a new robot named Digit through its paces. With arms and legs, Digit can move, grip, and handle objects much like a person.

Amazon “has been treating their workers like robots for years,” according to a union.

“Amazon is racing headlong toward employment losses with its automation. Hundreds of jobs at fulfillment centers have already vanished as a result of it, according to Stuart Richards, an organizer for the UK trade union GMB.

In reality, Amazon claimed at the introduction that its robots systems had contributed to the creation of “hundreds of thousands of new jobs” inside its operations.

“This includes 700 categories of new job types, in skilled roles, which didn’t exist within the company beforehand,” the company stated.

The IT company claims that over 750,000 robots are currently employed by it to do “highly repetitive tasks” “collaboratively” with its human employees.

During a media conference in Seattle, Tye Brady, the top technologist at Amazon Robotics, asserted that humans were “irreplaceable” and refuted the notion that the firm would eventually have totally automated warehouses.

“There’s not any part of me that thinks that would ever be a reality,” he stated.

“People are so central to the fulfilment process; the ability to think at a higher level, the ability to diagnose problems.”

Legs Not Wheel

Digit walks on two legs instead of four wheels. Moreover, it features arms that are capable of picking up and moving things, containers, client orders, and parcels.

This enabled it to “deal with steps and stairs or places in our facility where we need to move up and down,” according to Scott Dresser of Amazon Robotics, who spoke with the BBC.

The purpose of the study, he explained, was to see if the robot could operate securely alongside human workers, given it was only a prototype.

“It’s an experiment that we’re running to learn a little bit more about how we can use mobile robots and manipulators in our environment here at Amazon,” he explained.

Mr. Dresser asserted that the experiences at Amazon did not align with the concerns over the replacement of human labor.

According to our observations, these new technologies help us develop and expand by genuinely creating jobs. And the robots of today have provided us with several instances of this.

“They don’t always run unfortunately and we need people to repair them,” he stated.

Due to increasing demand to reduce costs, Amazon has increased the number of robots it uses.

It declared last year that it was conducting a trial for a massive robotic arm that can lift objects. It has begun deploying drones for deliveries in two US states, and it now utilizes wheeled robots to transport things around its warehouses.

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