"Amazon's robot workforce doubled in three years"

Amazon has several different robots for its tireless and high-volume operations to sort customer orders. Robot arms called Robin and Sparrow are being used at the Robot Innovation Center near Boston, where they are put into production after completing the entire design and manufacturing process.

Robin is described as "one of the most complex fixed robot arm systems ever built by Amazon," assisting in scanning and sorting packages at different stages for delivery, while Sparrow is an advanced robot that simplifies the delivery process.

The company also benefits from the Proteus and Hercules robot models, which can move containers, and the Sequoia robot system, which further sorts and moves containers to reduce physical strain on employees. These machines are said to alleviate the physical burden on employees, including repetitive actions such as bending and stretching.

Amazon states that Sequoia improves productivity by identifying and storing inventory at a rate 75% faster than current employees, which means products can be listed on Amazon's online marketplace faster. Once an order is placed, Sequoia can save up to 25% of order processing time, becoming a catalyst for faster shipping.

Compared to factories without robots, the accident rate and "injury-related work stoppage rate" (the frequency of injuries during work and subsequent downtime) at Amazon's robot sites in 2022 decreased by 15% and 18%, respectively.

Scott Dresser, Vice President of Amazon Robotics Technology, commented on how robots create opportunities for employees, challenging the notion that artificial intelligence poses a threat to workers.

He said, "Ensuring that robots collaborate and support employees is at the core of our design or deployment of systems like Sequoia and Digit."

"Over the past decade, we have deployed hundreds of thousands of robot systems while creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs in our operations. This includes 700 new job categories, all of which are skilled roles that did not exist in the company before."

According to the company's annual report for 2023, Amazon's growing fleet of robots is still far smaller than its total number of employees, which reached 1.525 million (including full-time and part-time employees).

Despite achieving overall revenue of $143.3 billion in the first three months of this year, a 13% increase from last year, Amazon has cut positions in its Amazon Web Services (AWS) division this year. Amazon expects to reach $142.65 billion, but operating profit has surged by over 200%, bringing this indicator to $15.3 billion.