Amazon builds a robot that feels

Amazon builds a robot that feels

Imagine a robot that not only sees but also carefully feels each box on the shelf - this is exactly what Amazon's new warehouse assistant Vulcan promises.

Vulcan combines high-resolution cameras with finely calibrated force sensors in two arms: One sorts carefully in the tightly packed fabric compartments, the other sucks out items without squeezing them. It already performs around 75% of all gripping operations that previously required human hands - and has already processed over 500,000 orders in the first test centers.

For the AI community, this is a quantum leap: every touch feeds Vulcan's own learning model - it continuously optimizes force, angle and speed, much like we humans learn to ride a bike. Cutting-edge research into tactile perception thus meets real industrial scaling; from Spokane to Hamburg, the machine is already rolling through the aisles and relieving employees of knee-bending marathons.

The question remains: if robots can feel, what new roles will open up for us humans alongside them - trainers, data curators, security architects?

Why it matters: Vulcan shows how tactile AI is catapulting robotics out of laboratories and into mass logistics, transforming rather than displacing human labor. Anyone building hardware with a brain today will get the blueprint for the next evolutionary stage of automation here.

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