Amazon ready to test new humanoid robots: is the future of deliveries without couriers?

The news released yesterday by the Reuters news agency should not come as much of a surprise. Or rather. The indiscretion (published in advance by the American portal The Information, citing a source familiar with the matter) that sees Amazon at work to develop software for humanoid robots is in itself nothing new, given the attention that the Seattle-based giant is giving to technologies that refer to the large-scale use of artificial intelligence. The fact that these robots could completely replace couriers in deliveries once again opens up the debate on the impact of AI on work and human activities. There is no official confirmation of this report but, according to Reuters, Amazon is reportedly in the process of completing the construction of an actual 'humanoid park', more precisely an indoor obstacle course at one of the company's headquarters in San Francisco where machines will be trained to navigate complex environments thanks to artificial intelligence software developed in-house and hardware supplied by third-party companies, including China's Unitree and the US-based Agility Robotics. The latter, and this is no small detail, has already collaborated with Jeff Bezos' company on Digit, a bipedal android capable of lifting and transporting objects of up to 35 kg inside warehouses.

Amazon is therefore taking a further step towards the automation of deliveries, and beyond the new park to test the capabilities of humanoid robots, a public demonstration of how the entire delivery chain (machines, couriers and distribution centres) will progressively benefit from a significant contribution of artificial intelligence with the intention of further speeding up the delivery time of parcels has recently taken place. The near future goal, according to The Information, is in fact to integrate robots with Amazon's fleet of Rivian electric vans, housing them on board and entrusting them to deliver directly to the doorstep of customers' homes (or offices). How much will the presence of humanoids impact the future of employment? The question is legitimate but has no easy answer and in this regard Amazon keeps repeating that automation aims to 'free' employees from repetitive tasks, allowing them to concentrate on more value-added activities.

What is in any case evident to many insiders is Amazon's wide-ranging strategy to automate logistics, a strategy of which the Prime Air drone delivery service is an integral part. Its implementation is still in the experimental phase and limited to only two locations in the United States, in Texas and Arizona, with a number of deliveries far lower (a few hundred, compared to the planned several thousand) than the initial objective. A couple of weeks ago, on the other hand, the FAA, the authority that supervises and regulates every aspect of civil aviation in the US, granted Amazon permission to transport its MK30 drones with packages containing lithium-ion batteries, and thus the right to ship consumer electronics devices such as smartphones, smartwatches, tablets, Kindle, remote controls, and other products by air, subject to a load limit of around 2.2 kg. Last December, on the other hand, the first flight test for drone deliveries in Europe was successfully completed in the skies over Abruzzo (Amazon has a sorting warehouse and distribution centre in the province of Chieti). This is a sign that the desire to bring the service to this side of the ocean is still alive and is of interest not only in Italy but also in the United Kingdom.

And if the numbers of the Prime Air service are still modest, that of the robots currently already employed in the e-commerce giant's warehouses and logistics centres is definitely of a different magnitude. According to various estimates there are around 750,000 of them globally (compared to 350,000 in 2021) and they perform tasks such as transporting shelves and sorting and packing items, working in synergy with human employees.