E-commerce giant Amazon has unveiled two new operations technologies, which it claims will work alongside employees to create safer and more efficient workspaces. The systems integrate the company’s latest robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) technology.
It says that the aim of these innovations is to reduce highly repetitive tasks, improve ergonomics, and expand career pathways.
The robotic system, called Blue Jay, is capable of performing multiple tasks at once in the company’s warehouses, as per Amazon.
The other offering is Project Eluna, an agentic AI system—designed to act with a degree of autonomy, reasoning through complex operational situations and recommending actions to operators.
Amazon unveils Blue Jay and Project Eluna
Blue Jay is described as an extra set of hands that helps employees with tasks that involve reaching and lifting.
The robotics system will coordinate multiple robotic arms to perform many tasks at once, collapsing what used to be three separate robotic stations into one streamlined workspace that can pick, stow, and consolidate in a single place.
Amazon says that the robotics system will provide “support for front-line employees, while creating greater efficiency in less physical space.”
The company claims that the development of the Blue Jay robotics system was completed from concept to production in just over a year. The advancements in AI and technologies such as digital twins helped the engineers at Amazon come up with the system in a very short span of time.
It is currently being tested in production at one of the company’s facilities in South Carolina, and the performance shows it is able to pick, stow, and consolidate approximately 75 percent of all types of items stored at the site.
The company hopes it will help ensure faster deliveries to customers in the days ahead and a safer workplace for the employees.
The company says Project Eluna will act “like an extra teammate” for operations managers and reduce their cognitive load. The operations managers have to monitor dozens of dashboards while responding to technology breakdowns, reallocating resources, and making rapid-fire decisions.
The agentic AI system will gather historical and real-time data across a building to anticipate bottlenecks and keep operations running smoothly.
Amelia smart glasses and human job loss threats
In other news, the company has also unveiled a prototype of AI-enabled smart glasses for its delivery drivers.
The ‘Amelia’ glasses from Amazon have a camera and display feature, paired with a waistcoat with buttons that drivers can use to take photos of product deliveries. The AI-enabled smart glasses also announce their foray into the smart wearables category, although they are not intended for customers.
Beryl Tomay, Amazon’s vice president of Transportation, said that the company is conducting tests in North America before they are rolled out globally. He also did not rule out the possibility that one day it could be sold to customers for different use cases.
It can be said, at least for now, that the smart glasses aim to ease the burden on Amazon’s delivery partners and are not intended to replace them.
Robotics, AI, and human job loss threats at Amazon
Interestingly, the announcements come just days after a New York Times report claimed the company is looking to expand its robot workforce, potentially reducing the need for human employees.
According to the NYT piece, which quotes Amazon’s internal documents, the company aims to replace up to 600,000 jobs with robots by 2033.
The report does not clarify if this will lead to widespread layoffs. However, using more robots would allow the company to meet growing demand without hiring additional workers.
However, a company spokesperson dismissed the claims of the NYT report in a conversation with CNET. He said that the company has no plans to cut back on human labor, and it was actively seeking to hire more people in the days ahead.
Every bit of development always comes with its own price tag. At a time when innovations in robotics and AI are taking the world by storm, there is also a growing fear regarding jobs being cut due to the advancements in technology.
It remains to be seen how firms and countries across the world will deal with the question of finding a balance between bringing in robots in the workforce at the cost of human jobs.
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