Amazon Ready to Test New Humanoid Robots: Is the Future of Delivery Without Couriers?

The news released yesterday by Reuters shouldn't come as much of a surprise. Or rather. The rumor (published in advance by the American portal The Information, citing a source familiar with the matter) that Amazon is working to develop software for humanoid robots is not in itself news, given the attention that the Seattle giant is paying to technologies that involve the large-scale use of artificial intelligence. The fact that these robots can completely replace couriers in deliveries once again opens the debate on the impact of AI on work and human activities. There is no official confirmation regarding this relationship but, according to Reuters, Amazon is reportedly completing the construction of a real "humanoid park", and more precisely an indoor obstacle course at one of the company's offices in San Francisco where the machines will be trained to navigate complex environments thanks to artificial intelligence software developed internally and hardware provided by third-party companies, including the Chinese Unitree and the American Agility Robotics. The latter, and this is no small detail, has already collaborated with Jeff Bezos' company for Digit, a bipedal android capable of lifting and carrying objects weighing up to 35 kg inside warehouses.

Amazon is therefore taking a further step towards the automation of deliveries and beyond the new fleet to test the capabilities of humanoid robots, a public demonstration dates back to the past few days of how the entire delivery chain (machines, couriers and distribution centers) will progressively benefit from a significant contribution of artificial intelligence with the intent of further accelerating the delivery times of packages. The next goal, according to what was reported by The Information, is in fact to integrate the robots with Amazon's fleet of Rivian electric vans, hosting them on board and tasking them with making deliveries directly to the customers' home (or office) door. How much will the presence of humanoids impact the future of employment? The question is legitimate but does not have an easy answer and in this regard Amazon continues to repeat that automation aims to "free" employees from repetitive tasks, allowing them to focus on activities with greater added value.

What is clear to many insiders is Amazon's broad-spectrum strategy to automate logistics, a strategy that also includes the Prime Air drone delivery service, whose implementation is still in the experimental phase and limited to just two locations in the United States, in Texas and Arizona, with a number of deliveries much lower (we're talking about a few hundred, compared to the estimated several thousand) than the initial goal. Just a couple of weeks ago, on the other hand, the FAA, the authority that oversees and regulates every aspect of civil aviation in the US, granted Amazon authorization to have its MK30 drones also transport packages containing lithium-ion batteries, and therefore the ability to also ship consumer electronics devices such as smartphones, smartwatches, tablets, Kindles, remote controls and other products by air, while maintaining the load limit of around 2.2 kg. Last December, instead, the first flight test for drone deliveries in Europe was successfully completed in the skies of Abruzzo (Amazon has a sorting warehouse and a distribution center in the province of Chieti). A sign that the desire to bring the service to this side of the ocean is still alive and involves, in addition to Italy, also the United Kingdom.

And if the numbers of the Prime Air service are still modest, the numbers of robots currently already employed in the warehouses and logistics centers of the e-commerce giant are decidedly on a different scale. According to various estimates, there are approximately over 750 thousand globally (compared to 350 thousand in 2021) and they perform tasks such as transporting shelves and selecting and packing items, working in synergy with human employees.