Amazon will soon employ more robots than humans as 1 million machines toil across facilities: report

Amazon will soon use more robots in its warehouses than human employees — with more than 1 million machines already deployed across facilities, according to a report.Many of these robots cover the heavy lifting involved in warehouse work, picking items down from tall shelves and moving goods around facilities.Others are advanced enough to help humans sort and package orders, according to the Wall Street Journal.Three-quarters of Amazon’s global deliveries are now assisted in some way by robots, according to the company.“They’re one step closer to that realization of the full integration of robotics,” Rueben Scriven, research manager at robotics consulting firm Interact Analysis, told the Journal.Amazon said the robots have allowed them to free up workers for more skilled tasks and cut down on repetition.

“Since introducing robots within Amazon’s operations, we’ve continued to hire hundreds of thousands of employees to work in our facilities and created many new job categories worldwide, including positions like flow control specialists, floor monitors, and reliability maintenance engineers,” an Amazon spokesperson told The Post.At a 3-million-square-foot facility in Shreveport, La., more than six dozen robotic arms sort and stack millions of items.They prepare carts to be loaded onto trucks and package paper bags for orders.These advanced bots work in tandem with human workers at the Louisiana warehouse, handing products to employees to fill orders and reaching for hard-to-grab items inside shelves as workers supervise.Products whizz through this facility 25% faster than at other warehouses.That’s consistent with Amazon’s overall productivity, which has soared despite employing fewer workers per facility.The average number of employees per facility dropped to roughly 670 last year – its lowest level in the past 16 years, according to a Journal analysis. The number of packages shipped per employee, meanwhile, has risen to 3,870 from just 17...