Recently, Amazon announced the creation of the Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund (AIIF), a $1 billion fund to develop and fine-tune the robots and technologies that work in its warehouses.
According to the report, the fund focuses on support for new supply chain and logistics technologies, with a focus on companies that are progressively increasing the speed of delivery, improving the warehouse and logistics worker experience, and reducing the potential for worker injury while increasing warehouse automation.
Ceballos, Amazon’s vice president of global corporate development, said Amazon is committed to using its scale to invest in “companies that can inspire emerging technological innovation”.
So far, through AIIF, Amazon has invested in the first five companies, which are：
Agility Robotics: The company is developing a bipedal robot called Digit.
BionicHIVE: This Israeli startup is developing autonomous robots that can climb warehouse shelves.
Mantis Robotics: The company is building a robotic arm with haptic feedback capabilities.
Modjoul: A health and biomechanics software company developing technology. The startup’s main focus is on musculoskeletal issues, one of the most common complaints of Amazon warehouse workers.
Vimaan: works on computer vision technology to improve inventory management.
As you can see, each of these five companies, each with a unique technology, could bring great value to Amazon’s warehouse operations.
A $100 billion blue ocean of warehouse robots is opening up
Over the past decade, global e-commerce sales have continued to grow at a compound annual growth rate of more than 20%, with global sales reaching approximately $4.5 trillion by 2021, thus driving the development of warehouse robotics applications, while the rise of global smart manufacturing in recent years has also increased the demand for warehouse automation.
On the other hand, major countries around the world have seen an increase in labor costs and recruitment difficulties, the corresponding talent recruitment competition is fierce, a report shows that the eve of the holiday shopping season last December, Amazon offered up to $ 3,000 onboarding bonus, in the absence of labor, machine for human has become an inevitable choice.
With the advancement of warehouse robotics and the corresponding growth in demand, the application of warehouse robots in the logistics industry has come to a turning point of explosion. Warehouse automation is no longer just the icing on the cake, but a necessity for sustainable development. This means that there will be a constant need for more warehouse robots, both to replace robots already in use with newer, more efficient versions, and to take over more of the work that is still being done by humans with advanced robots.
Sources:
https://www.microsiervos.com/archivo/robots/digit-v2-robot-anda-cajas.html
The blog of Logistics at MGEPS at UPV 