Amazon's 'collaborative' robots offer peek into the future as autonomous machines work with humans

Hundreds of orange robots zoom and whiz back and forth like miniature bumper cars -- but instead of colliding, they're following a carefully plotted path to transport thousands of items ordered from online giant Amazon. A young woman fitted out in a red safety vest, with pouches full of sensors and radio transmitters on her belt and a tablet in hand, moves through their complicated choreography. This robot ballet takes place at the new Amazon order fulfillment center that opened on Staten Island in New York in September. In an 80,000 square-meter (855,000 square-foot) space filled with the whirring sounds of machinery, the Seattle-based e-commerce titan has deployed some of the most advanced instruments in the rapidly growing field of robots capable of collaborating with humans. The high-tech vest, worn at Amazon warehouses since last year, is key to the whole operation -- it allows 21-year-old Deasahni Bernard to safely enter the robot area, to pick up an object that has fallen off its automated host, for example, or check if a battery needs replacing.