Amazon unveiled a new warehouse robot that can identify and pick 65% of the items it sells. 'This will take my job,' one warehouse worker said.

• Amazon showed off a new picking robot on Thursday, a major advancement on its current robotics capability.
• Amazon envisions Sparrow one day taking over many of the roles in its fulfillment process currently performed by humans, according to a patent.

Amazon's newest robot could one day take the place of many human workers across its giant fulfillment network, generating apprehension among some of the company's more than 750,000 US warehouse employees.

The robot, called Sparrow, is Amazon's "first robotic system in our warehouses that can detect, select, and handle individual products in our inventory," a spokesperson said in a statement. Using AI, computer vision, and a suction-cup "hand," the robot is capable of handling around 65% of the products sold on Amazon's website before they are packaged, the company said at a technology expo where Sparrow was unveiled.

The robot arm is currently deployed at one warehouse in Texas for testing, the spokesperson added. Amazon envisions a wider rollout as soon as next year.

For now, Sparrow is being used "to consolidate inventory," the Amazon spokesperson said in a statement. "But the possible applications of this technology in our operations are much broader."

'Manual effort can be redirected to other tasks'

The scope of those ambitions is clear in a patent Amazon filed in 2020 describing some of the technology powering Sparrow.

The patent envisioned Sparrow's suction-grip arm replacing human workers who "pick items from inventory, place items in totes, remove items from totes, place items into bins, remove items from bins, place items into boxes for shipping," the patent read. "As a result, manual effort can be redirected to other tasks."

The robot's capabilities have sparked fears among some Amazon workers that Sparrow could leave them without work. Amazon employs more than 750,000 U.S. warehouse workers, many of them in the kind of picking and sorting roles that Sparrow is able to perform.

Sparrow "will take my job," one Amazon warehouse worker said, after reading Amazon's description of the robot. The worker asked not to be identified out of fear of retaliation from Amazon. On social media forums for Amazon warehouse workers, users discussed the likelihood that Sparrow could leave warehouses "quiet," save for small teams of humans there to repair the robots.

Amazon has pushed back on concerns that its robots will lead to a net loss in warehouse employment. The introduction of robots into Amazon's warehouses "created over 700 new categories of jobs that now exist within the company," the company wrote in a blog post Thursday announcing Sparrow. Amazon also runs an upskilling program, the Amazon Mechatronic and Robotics Apprenticeship, helping "employees learn new skills and pursue in-demand, technical maintenance roles," which are typically higher-paid.

A debate over the impact on worker safety

Amazon has also sought to cast Sparrow as an important improvement in worker safety. The robot will save human workers from many of the repetitive tasks that can lead to debilitating musculoskeletal injuries, the company said in its announcement Thursday.

But to date, the relationship between worker safety and Amazon's existing robots has been more complicated.

Amazon's roboticized warehouses have higher injury rates than the company's non-roboticized warehouses, according to internal Amazon injury data obtained by the nonprofit newsroom Reveal in 2020. Workers and subsequent inspections by workplace safety regulators have found that robots – which never tire or take a break – make workers move so quickly their risk of injury can reach hazardous levels.

Sparrow could similarly speed up the pace of work and lead to greater injuries in the warehouses where it's deployed, said Mohamed Mire Mohamed, who worked for five years at an Amazon warehouse in Minnesota and now helps organize workers there with the Awood Center, a local advocacy group.

"You can't compete with the robots," Mohamed said. "They want you to compete with the robots. They want all the employees to compete with them. But who can win against a robot?"

The vast majority of Amazon's existing robots were built by Kiva Systems, which Amazon acquired in 2012, and propel shelves of merchandise to and from worker stations in warehouses. The company recently introduced a robot called Proteus that can ferry merchandise and carts around the warehouse floor, and two robot arms that put merchandise onto pallets and carts.

'These robots collapse'

Some workers involved in union organizing efforts at Amazon warehouses sought to downplay the possibility that Amazon's new generation of robots could dampen labor activism at the company.

"Everyone knows that Amazon wants to replace human labor with robots," said Ryan Brown, an Amazon worker and the president of the union Carolina Amazonians United for Solidarity & Empowerment. One of Amazon's robot arms is installed at Brown's facility, he said, but "interestingly enough, the robot that we have is always down."

"These robots collapse," agreed Brett Daniels, an Amazon worker and Amazon Labor Union organizer. The union successfully organized Amazon employees at one New York warehouse. "A human, at the end of the day, is the one who will be repairing them when they cease to function."

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