Amazon announces 2 new ways it's using robots to assist employees and deliver for customers

We're thrilled to see how our technology is affecting Amazon's operations, from our newest robotic arms, Sparrow and Cardinal, to our first mobile robot that can operate on its own, Proteus. Currently, over 750,000 robots collaborate with human workers to complete extremely repetitive activities, freeing up human resources to better serve consumers.

We are very happy to announce that, in the midst of all of these endeavors, we have recently introduced a new robotic system to assist in fulfilling customer orders for holiday shopping this year. This new technology is called Sequoia, and it's currently in use at one of our fulfillment sites in Houston, Texas. 

Sequoia will help us delight consumers with better speed and increased accuracy for delivery estimates while also enhancing worker safety at our facilities by reinventing how we store and manage inventory at our sites. We can now identify and store goods at our fulfillment facilities up to 75% faster than we could before thanks to Sequoia. This helps vendors and buyers alike as we can put products for sale on Amazon.com more quickly. Sequoia also speeds up the order processing time through a fulfillment center by up to 25% after an order is placed, increasing the quantity of goods we can ship same-day or next-day and improving our shipment predictability.

Sequoia combines several robot technologies, including mobile robots, gantry systems, robotic arms, and a new ergonomic staff workstation, to containerize our inventory into totes, building on a number of research and development initiatives. The way the system operates is that mobile robots move containerized merchandise straight to a gantry, which is a tall structure with a platform that holds equipment that may be used to replenish totes or assign items to an employee for customers' orders to be picked out.

Workers get these totes at a recently created ergonomic workplace that enables them to complete all tasks in their power zone, which is the area between mid-thigh and mid-chest height. Employees will no longer need to frequently bend over or stoop to pick up orders from customers thanks to this method, supporting our