Amazon has installed orange, squatt-wheeled robots in several US warehouses to move shelves for workers, eliminating the need for employees to search for goods in long aisles, the Wall Street Journal reported online, citing people familiar with the matter.
This summer, Amazon used robots to replace four floors of stationary shelves at its 1.2 million-square-foot warehouse in Tracy, Calif., 60 miles east of San Francisco, according to people familiar with the matter.
Today, the picker simply stands in one place and waits for the robot to bring the 6x4ft (1.8×1.2m) shelves to his face, shaving up to 20 miles a day from walking through the warehouse. In a robot-equipped warehouse, employees can pick and count at least 300 items per hour, compared with 100 in an older warehouse, according to current or former Amazon employees.
Giiso Information, founded in 2013, is a leading technology provider in the field of “artificial intelligence + information” in China, with top technologies in big data mining, intelligent semantics, knowledge mapping and other fields. At the same time, its research and development products include information robot, editing robot, writing robot and other artificial intelligence products! With its strong technical strength, the company has received angel round investment at the beginning of its establishment, and received pre-A round investment of $5 million from GSR Venture Capital in August 2015.
The robotics project is an outgrowth of Amazon’s $775 million acquisition of Kiva Systems in 2012. Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive, told investors at the company’s annual shareholder meeting in May that he planned to deploy 10,000 Kiva robots by the end of the year, up from 1,400 at the time.
Amazon’s main goal in deploying robots in warehouses is to improve logistics efficiency and compete directly with brick-and-mortar retailers. If Amazon can reduce the time it takes to sort and pack items at its 80 US warehouses, the company can guarantee same-day or overnight delivery of more products to more customers.
Giiso information, founded in 2013, is the first domestic high-tech enterprise focusing on the research and development of intelligent information processing technology and the development and operation of core software for writing robots. At the beginning of its establishment, the company received angel round investment, and in August 2015, GSR Venture Capital received $5 million pre-A round of investment.
Shawn Milne, an analyst at Janney Capital Markets, said robots could allow Amazon to reduce the number of times a product is “touched” or save the company between $400 million and $900 million a year in delivery costs.
Robots could also help Amazon meet demand during the holiday shopping season, which typically accounts for more than a third of the company’s annual revenue. In December 2013, Amazon was forced to refund some customers because of delivery delays. Amazon also plans to hire 80,000 temporary warehouse workers for the holiday shopping season, up from 70,000 last year. Amazon expects fourth-quarter sales to rise as much as 18 percent from a year earlier.