Amazon unveils robot-driven warehouse for handling holiday orders

Amazon revealed its latest-generation warehouse in time for Cyber Monday. The warehouse uses robotics, vision systems, and other high-end tech to speed up deliveries for its ecommerce customers.

Seattle-based Amazon said its eighth-generation fulfillment center uses 20 years’ worth of software and mechanical innovations. The company plans to build 10 warehouses based on the technology that it has developed.

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“The Amazon fulfillment teams are dedicated to innovating in our fulfillment centers to increase speed of delivery while enabling greater local selection at lower costs for our customers. The advancements in our latest fulfillment centers hit all three of these customer desires while continuing to provide a work environment that is great for employees,” said Dave Clark, Amazon’s senior vice president of worldwide operations and customer service, in a statement.

Amazon uses Kiva robots in the new center, and it already has 15,000 such robots operating in the U.S. The new center also uses Robo-Stow, one of Earth’s largest robotic arms, for moving large quantities of inventory for customer order fulfillment. The vision systems enable the receipt and unloading of an entire trailer of inventory in as little as 30 minutes instead of hours.

The warehouse also has graphically oriented computer systems for employees to use while fulfilling orders for customers. Amazon recently said it will hire 80,000 seasonal employees to fulfill customer orders this holiday, a 14 percent increase over last year. The company expects that thousands of those employees will stay on in regular, full-time roles.