Amazon Robots in the Fullfilment Centers
Amazon is a company that I personally shop with way too often, thanks to the great prices, the fact that they have pretty much everything, and the quick shipping. Throughout the last 3 years alone, Amazon’s annual revenue has gone from $280.522 Billion in 2019, to 469.822 Billion in 2021, that’s an increase of $189.300 Billion or 67.4813%! T hroughout this time, Amazon has gone from having 798,000 employees in 2019, to having 1,608,000 in 2021, an increase of 101.504%. With the extreme continued growth Amazon has, and the growth that is sure to come in the future, the company has looked for ways to increase productivity, cut down on shipping times, and cut down on overall expenses. In 2012, Amazon purchased a robotics company named Kiva Systems, which gave Amazon mobile robots that could carry shelves of products from worker to worker, and read barcodes on the ground for directions as it went from worker to worker. Amazon now uses more than 200,000 robots within its warehouses, and is looking to have the robotic technology capable of packaging orders, sorting packaged orders, as well as a robot that can grasp a wide range and size of products, with a level of dexterity similar to what a human hand has. In the near future, as well as further in the future, Amazon will be able to automate most, if not all, of the processes within the warehouse, and achieve complete automation within the warehouse aspect of their business.