Amazon is well known for its use of robotic solutions, with over 750,000 robots in use across its operations. Amazon has now introduced two new robotic solutions, Sequoia and Digit. Sequoia, currently operational in Amazon’s Houston fulfillment centre, integrates multiple robotic systems including mobile robots and robotic arms to deliver containerized inventory to a gantry that can restock totes or deliver them to an employee. Digit is a humanoid robot that has resulted from the partnership between Amazon and Agility Robotics. Digit is equipped with arms and legs, enabling it to move, grasp, and handle items like a human. Digit is currently undergoing trials and will eventually be deployed alongside human workers in buildings that are poorly designed for other robotic solutions.
The intention of these new solutions is to increase both efficiency and worker safety, the article from About Amazon states that:
“By reimagining how we store and manage inventory at our sites, Sequoia will help us delight customers with greater speed and increased accuracy for delivery estimates, while also improving employee safety at our facilities. Sequoia allows us to identify and store inventory we receive at our fulfillment centres up to 75% faster than we can today. This means we can list items for sale on Amazon.com more quickly, benefiting both sellers and customers. When orders are placed, Sequoia also reduces the time it takes to process an order through a fulfillment centre by up to 25%, which improves our shipping predictability and increases the number of goods we can offer for Same-Day or Next-Day shipping.”
These new robotic solutions will likely be added across many of the more than 150 fulfillment centres operated by Amazon, and the Digit robotic solution will allow the implementation of robots into far more places than previously possible. The advancements made and tested in these trials will likely also feed into other areas in which robotics are employed. SAR Insight tracks several different robot and drone markets in its Device service, including robot vacuums, entertainment robots, consumer drones, delivery drones, and service drones as well as demographics such as the number of warehouses in which technologies such as Sequoia and Digit may be employed.
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The original article is here.
