Employees at an Amazon warehouse near Seattle recently got a glimpse of the future of work: a 5-foot-9-inch robot that resembles a human, walks like a bird and has glowing white eyes. Called Digit, the machine is configured for one basic task: plucking empty yellow bins off a shelf and ferrying them several feet to a conveyor.

Seattle

Employees at an Amazon warehouse located near Seattle were recently introduced to a new addition to their workforce: a humanoid robot named Digit. Digit stands at 5 feet 9 inches tall, has a unique walking style reminiscent of a bird, and features glowing white eyes. The primary function of this robot involves retrieving empty yellow bins from a shelf and transporting them to a conveyor, facilitating a more streamlined workflow within the distribution center.

This development represents a significant step in integrating advanced robotics into the day-to-day operations of Amazon's distribution centers. By focusing on specific, repetitive tasks, such as moving bins to conveyors, Digit aims to optimize efficiency and possibly redefine the roles within these warehouses. The introduction of such robots may herald a new era in the automation of logistics and fulfillment processes, aligning with broader industry trends towards technological adoption in operations.



Amazon tests humanoid robots in distribution centers

I mean, are we at the cusp of some breakthrough? What got us here? Why does it feel so sci-fi? Yeah, it really feels like we are. I think a lot of it is just sort of the consumer electronics revolution, broadly speaking. Motors are cheaper. A little actuators that make these guys move and able to bend and flex. Battery technology has gotten a lot better. And then recently you layer AI on the top of it, right? These robots don't really make a lot of sense if you have to have somebody piloting the controls, but if you can do it sort of systematically and have them kind of reason their way through the world, then maybe this all starts to work. There's a lot happening in robotics, right? Think about figure AI, think about what Tesla is doing with Optimus, but it's not sort of real-world deployment. What is Amazon's plan to make this commonplace? So Amazon hasn't told us a whole lot about their roadmap, but what we know now is that they are testing these robots, you know, like you said, to move totes in their warehouses. There are a lot of spots in Amazon's facilities, which are already highly automated, that still require, you know, flesh and blood, somebody picking up boxes, moving boxes to a conveyor belt from a pallet. That work is pretty dangerous. A lot of people don't want to do that work anyway because of relatively low pay and kind of hard pace of work issues. So their pitching, or at least Agility Robotics' is, that they might have a solution to this in the form of Digit, their little white-eyed robot.

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