Amazon has introduced Vulcan, its first robot equipped with a sense of touch, marking a major advancement in warehouse automation. Unlike earlier systems that relied solely on vision and suction, Vulcan uses force-feedback sensors and adaptive gripping tools to carefully pick and stow items, even in tightly packed bins. This technology improves efficiency and safety by taking over physically taxing tasks, like reaching high or low storage compartments, which previously required human workers to use ladders. Vulcan also learns from its interactions, becoming smarter over time, and is part of Amazon’s broader push to integrate advanced robotics that work in harmony with employees. The company plans to scale Vulcan across its U.S. and European fulfillment centers in the coming years.
Today at our Delivering the Future event in Dortmund, Germany, we’re introducing a robot that is neither numb nor dumb. Built on key advances in robotics, engineering, and physical AI, Vulcan is our first robot with a sense of touch.
“Vulcan represents a fundamental leap forward in robotics,” Parness says. “It’s not just seeing the world, it’s feeling it, enabling capabilities that were impossible for Amazon robots until now.”
And it’s already changing the way we operate our fulfillment centers, helping make our employees’ jobs safer and easier while moving customers’ orders more efficiently.“Working alongside Vulcan, we can pick and stow with greater ease,” says Kari Freitas Hardy, a front-line employee at GEG1, a fulfillment center in Spokane, Washington. “It’s great to see how many of my co-workers have gained new job skills and taken on more technical roles, like I did, once they started working closer with the technology at our sites.”The power of touch
Vulcan is not our first robot that can pick things up. Our Sparrow, Cardinal, and Robin systems use computer vision and suction cups to move individual products or packages packed by human workers. Proteus, Titan, and Hercules lift and haul carts of goods around our fulfillment centers.But with its sense of touch—its ability to understand when and how it makes contact with an object—Vulcan unlocks new ways to improve our operations jobs and facilities.In our fulfillment centers, we maximize efficiency by storing inventory in fabric-covered pods that are divided into compartments about a foot square, each of which holds up to 10 items on average. Fitting an item into or plucking one out of this crowded space has historically been challenging for robots that lack the natural dexterity of humans.Vulcan is our first robot with a similar kind of finesse. Vulcan can easily manipulate objects within those compartments to make room for whatever it’s stowing, because it knows when it makes contact and how much force it’s applying and can stop short of doing any damage.Vulcan does this using an “end of arm tooling” that resembles a ruler stuck onto a hair straightener, plus force feedback sensors that tell it how hard it’s pushing or how firmly it’s holding something, so it can stay below the point at which it risks doing damage.The ruler bit pushes around the items already in those compartments to make room for whatever it wants to add. The arms of the hair straightener (the “paddles”) hold the item to be added, adjusting their grip strength based on the item’s size and shape, then use built-in conveyor belts to zhoop the item into the bin.For picking items from those bins, Vulcan uses an arm that carries a camera and a suction cup. The camera looks at the compartment and picks out the item to be grabbed, along with the best spot to hold it by. While the suction cup grabs it, the camera watches to make sure it took the right thing and only the right thing, avoiding what our engineers call the risk of “co-extracting non-target items.”With the ability to pick and stow approximately 75% of all various types of items we store at our fulfillment centers, and at speeds comparable to that our front-line employees, Vulcan represents a step change in how automation and AI can assist our employees in their everyday tasks. It also has the smarts to identify when it can’t move a specific item, and can ask a human partner to tag in, helping us leveraging the best of what our technology and employees can achieve by working together. […]That transformation is on its way not just because Vulcan’s so capable, but because we implement our best work at Amazon scale. We plan to deploy Vulcan systems over the next couple of years, at sites throughout Europe and the United States.
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