Vulcan seems the name of one of the robots of the eighties, like Gundam. Instead it is the new warehouse robot equipped with a sense of touch: unlike the previous models, which merely moved boxes with suction cups or artificial vision systems, Vulcan is able to grab more precision three quarters of the items in the warehouses, and can evaluate their shape, understand how to take them without damaging them, place them in the so -called pods (i.e. the higher and lower levels of the shelves) where operators today have to climb on stairs or bend tens of times a day.
A fatigue saving for them, an investment of automation for the company. According to Amazon Vulcan represents “a fundamental step forward in robotics”, because it no longer limits itself to seeing the world, but also begins to hear it. Words of Aaron Parnes, director of robotics. The robot is already being tested and works next to human operators, helps to identify and withdraw objects, learn from errors. In case of difficulty it can even “ask for help” to learn new movements.
Let’s go towards an increasingly narrow integration between humans and machines, with the automation that approaches the most delicate thresholds: those of dexterity, sensitivity and tactile help. Amazon already has 750,000 robots in operation, however, so far no one had really “touched” the finest tasks. Vulcan does it. For now he joins the operators, who continue to manually manage the shelves pushed towards them by robots on wheels, but it is clear that, once perfected, Vulcan will not just attend: it will simplify, accelerate, and most likely replace humans. I already imagine what you are thinking, and I too will arrive shortly.
In the meantime, the reassurances come punctual: Tye Brady, head of Amazon’s robotics, says that “robots cannot completely replace human beings” and that “people will always make part of the equation”. Robots, he says, only serve to amplify human potential and improve safety at work. However, the question is not if Vulcan can replace a person, it is that he can do it for three quarters of the articles and tomorrow most likely for the other fourth. The real theme is that it is no longer just a matter of strength: automation also touches precision, adaptability, ability to recognize and treat different objects in complex environments. Not only that. Amazon also announces a new technology to create tailor -made packaging, based on automatic learning and total automation. By the end of the year, more than 70 machinery will be installed in Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Spain, and then expand globally by 2027.
Here too, the declared goal is efficiency, and here too the workforce is the implicit unspoken. In 2023, Goldman Sachs estimated that by 2030 up to 300 million jobs could be eliminated or transformed radically due to the effect of generative artificial intelligence. Perhaps it is an exaggerated forecast, maybe not (said damned: perhaps that perhaps maybe not). A concern that has deep roots: at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Luddists destroyed the mechanical frames because they feared that the machines would delete their work and actually were wrong, although we were at the dawn of the industrial revolution. Today nobody sets fire to an automated warehouse, however, the basic feeling is not so far away.
We do not know if it will go in the same way, we do not know if this new automation will produce more work or more unemployment. At that point two scenarios remain.
The first is that desired and vaticinated by Elon Musk and Bill Gates (I wrote about it here), a world where robots produce and humans are supported by a universal income financed by the taxation of machines. The second is the one in which robots produce and humans arrange themselves. In both cases, Vulcan has already started touching.