Robotic Tech Vests

Amazon launches robotic tech vest in a bid to improve safety at its warehouses.

17:13 23 January 2019

Amazon has recently introduced “robotic tech vest” to at least 25 of its sites to ensure workers are detected by the firm’s robots and automated system in a bid to prevent any collisions.

 

The device, which attach to warehouse workers’ electronic utility belts, aids employees working at warehouses to fix a robot or retrieve a fallen item. It works in tandem with the robot’s pre-existing obstacle avoidance system.

 

Amazon Robotics vice president Brad Porter said: “In the past, associates would mark out the grid of cells where they would be working in order to enable the robotic traffic planner to smartly route around that region,” 

 

“What the vest allows the robots to do is detect the human from farther away and smartly update its travel plan to steer clear without the need for the associate to explicitly mark out those zones.”

 

Porter added that the vests have already been involved in “more than one million unique activations” and that tests have been a “huge success.”

 

The move follows a report from the US National Council for Occupational Safety and Health, which claimed that Amazon was one of the most dangerous places to work in the country. Since 2013, seven employees have been killed in Amazon warehouses.