They won’t ask for bathroom breaks.

They won’t request vacation time.

They won’t be late.

They don’t require health insurance.

Humanoid robots are here to replace human workers.

Amazon started a trial of humanoid robots in its U.S. warehouses.

The company said the decision would ‘free up employees to better assist customers.’

How long until all Amazon stores are fully automated with humanoid workers?

WATCH:

BBC reports:

It said it was testing a new robot called Digit, which has arms and legs and can move, grasp and handle items in a similar fashion to a human.

A union said Amazon had “been treating their workers like robots for years”.

“Amazon’s automation is [a] head-first race to job losses. We’ve already seen hundreds of jobs disappear to it in fulfilment centres,” said Stuart Richards, an organiser at UK trade union GMB.

As the announcement was made, Amazon said its robotics systems had in fact helped create “hundred of thousands of new jobs” within its operations.

“This includes 700 categories of new job types, in skilled roles, which didn’t exist within the company beforehand,” the firm said.

According to the tech giant, it now has more than 750,000 robots working “collaboratively” with its human staff, often being used to take on “highly repetitive tasks”.

As 100 Percent Fed Up reported, Agility Robotics announced plans to open the world’s first factory for humanoid robots.

Per 100 Percent Fed Up:

“Agility Robotics, creator of the groundbreaking bipedal robot Digit, today revealed that the company is opening RoboFab™, a robot manufacturing facility in Salem, Oregon with the capability to produce more than 10,000 robots per year,” Agility Robotics said Monday.

Digit is the “first human-centric, multi-purpose robot made for logistics work,” according to Agility Robotics’ website.

“This is the world’s first humanoid robot factory. This has never been done before,” said Agility Robotics Chief Operating Officer Aindrea Campbell.

Campbell hopes one day, humanoid robots will be all over the world.

All over the world?

It appears they’ll fill up Amazon warehouses to snatch jobs.

WATCH:

Learn more about the humanoid factory below:

Amazon insists the humanoid robots would help create new jobs at the company.

“Tye Brady, the chief technologist at Amazon Robotics, claimed that – although it will render some jobs redundant – the deployment of robots would create new ones,” The Guardian writes.

Per The Guardian:

In a briefing at a media event at an Amazon facility on the outskirts of Seattle, Brady told reporters that he wants to “eliminate all the menial, the mundane and the repetitive” tasks inside Amazon’s business. He denied this would lead to job cuts, however, claiming that it “does not” mean Amazon will require fewer staff.

Insisting that people are “irreplaceable” in the company’s operation, Brady pushed back at the suggestion it could one day have a fully automated warehouse. “There’s not any part of me that thinks that would ever be a reality,” he said. “People are so central to the fulfillment process; the ability to think at a higher level, the ability to diagnose problems.

“We will always need people … I’ve never been around an automated system that works 100% of the time. I don’t think you have as well.”

Digit was developed by Agility Robotics, a startup based in Corvallis, Oregon, and backed by Amazon. The robot, which can walk forwards, backwards and sideways, and can crouch – is 5ft 9in (175cm) tall and weighs 143lb (65kg). It can carry up to 35lb (16kg).

Amazon plans to put Digit to work “in spaces and corners of warehouses in novel ways”, it said in a blogpost. “We believe that there is a big opportunity to scale a mobile manipulator solution, such as Digit, which can work collaboratively with employees.

“Our initial use for this technology will be to help employees with tote recycling, a highly repetitive process of picking up and moving empty totes once inventory has been completely picked out of them.”

Join The Conversation. Leave a Comment.


We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, profanity, vulgarity, doxing, or discourteous behavior. If a comment is spam, instead of replying to it please click the ∨ icon below and to the right of that comment. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain fruitful conversation.