End Of Human Delivery Workers? Amazon Testing Humanoid Robots That 'Spring Out' Of Vans

E-commerce giant Amazon is preparing to deliver orders to its customers' doors via a humanoid robot workforce. These robots would "spring out" of the vans and deliver the orders and eventually take the jobs of the delivery workers, according to a report in The Information, as cited by The Guardian.

The tech behemoth has already built a "humanoid park" at its San Francisco office to test the delivery robots. An indoor obstacle course, about the size of a coffee shop, is being used to test the agility of the robots. Amazon is hoping that the robots will be able to travel in its Rivian vans and expedite the deliveries.

Currently, Amazon has 20,000 Rivians in the US and has placed one of teh vans in the testing maze. Once the robots have aced the humanoid park, they will be taken for 'field trips' in the real world, where the robots will attempt to deliver packages to homes.

Amazon is developing the artificial intelligence (AI) software that would power such robots, adding that the company plans to use hardware from other firms in its tests, for now.

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Robots and Amazon

Even with a human driver, a robot could theoretically speed up drop-off times by visiting one address while the human employee delivers to another. The company is also hoping to include Zoox, a robotaxi company it acquired in 2020, to fully automate end-to-end package delivery -- from the warehouse to the customer's front door.

The $2 trillion company is already using a variety of autonomous robots in its warehouse operations. It has deployed Digit robot, developed by Agility Robotics, which allows employees to hand off work to humanoids and become a “robot manager”.

Last year, Amazon was given permission to test-fly drones beyond a human controller's line of sight in the UK, paving the way for using the technology in home delivery.