From drones to humanoid robots: how Amazon is delivering the future

As part of its Delivering the Future event, Amazon unveiled an array of products and services to a crowd of global journalists keen to see what the company has developed since its robotics-filled event last year.

The latest event covered themes including AI, healthcare delivery, and sustainable packaging, but the drones and robots stole the show.

The new additions are either in the early stages of testing or rollout, but Amazon has huge ambitions for what these technologies can do in the future.

One year on from Retail Week’s visit to Amazon’s Boston fulfilment centre, how have collaborative robots progressed? What else has been introduced? And how will these services revolutionise the (near) future?

Meet Digit

The immediately noticeable and most intriguing feature that was introduced was Digit, Amazon’s newest recruit.

The 1.75m high (5ft 9in), 65kg human-like robot has been developed in partnership with Agility Robotics to work alongside employees to grab, move and handle items in the warehouses.

Upon meeting Digit, it was explained that the biped robot was in the first few days of testing and that it would be initially used to help staff with tote recycling.

“We will learn what works and what doesn’t work,” says Amazon robotics chief technologist Tye Brady.

“We want to eliminate the manual labour that’s repetitive, mundane, menial and that would cause recordable injuries. It will allow people to focus on more high-level tasking.”

Amazon is focused on collaborative efforts between humans and machines, and says “hundreds of thousands” of new jobs have been created by the implementation of robots. 

“We think of this as a system of people and machines working together, and to develop our machines in a way that’s naturally intuitive for people to use; to extend human capability, for our employees to use our machines in a way that allows them to do their job, not only more efficiently, but also more safely,” says Brady.

The use of such advanced, technical, humanoid robots in the workforce raises questions about how qualified staff will need to be. But Brady says to work alongside robots, “you do not need to know robotics, you need to be human.”

He insists that Amazon would never strive to be fully automated as people are “central” to the fulfilment process. It is difficult to know just how much of its operations will eventually become automated with the large-scale rollout of and improvements to robot technology.

Delivery via skies

One of the main things Amazon has been developing is its Prime Air drone delivery service, which was first mentioned a decade ago by founder Jeff Bezos.

News emerged last week that this service would extend beyond its two US locations to reach one location in the UK and Italy, and an additional US city in late 2024.

The new MK30 drone is 40% quieter, can fly to distances of up to 12km and operate in more adverse weather conditions.

Prime Air vice president David Carbon says its vision for a “successful delivery solution” is to “deliver 500 million packages by the end of the decade to customers in highly populated dense suburban areas.”

Since the launch of its MK27 drones in the US in December 2022, Carbon says “thousands” of deliveries have been made, but there is currently only a small proportion of people who are able to receive deliveries using this method.

Packages have to weigh 2.3kg (5lb) or less, customers have to live within range of a selected fulfilment centre, and the drones cannot land in public spaces – which is an issue for those with no outside private space. 

Amazon is also aware that drones cannot fly “beyond the line of sight” as they always need a human on the ground. A spokesperson said it is “working with the US Federal Aviation Administration” to work beyond the line of sight and “enable scale.”

It is possible that drones could become a common way for Prime customers to receive their packages within the next couple of years, but Amazon will need to ensure larger scale, regulatory approval, and enough demand if their undisclosed investment in drones is going to pay off.

Although drone deliveries and humanoid robots are yet to take off on a worldwide scale, it is clear that Amazon is paving the way for an innovative future that isn’t as far away as we first thought.