WASHINGTON - Amazon’s warehouses will always need human staff, the firm’s chief robotics technologist has told the BBC.
The company said it had deployed more than 200,000 warehouse robots working in around 50 of its locations. But despite Amazon investing heavily in advanced robotics, Tye Brady said the firm’s centres would never reach the point where they could be fully automated. “Not at all. One ounce of my body just doesn’t see that,” he said.
“The way that I think about this is a symphony of humans and machines working together, you need both. “The challenge that we have in front of us is how do we smartly design our machines to extend human capability.” Mr Brady was speaking to the BBC at Re:Mars, an Amazon event intended to showcase the firm’s latest work in machine learning, automation, robotics and space.