Robots Won't Close the Warehouse Worker Gap Anytime Soon

This July, Amazon showed off several new warehouse robots with names borrowed from Sesame Street that are, presumably, meant to evoke childhood wonder rather than futuristic dread. Bert, a wheeled robot about the size of a filing cabinet, navigates around a warehouse carrying products. Ernie, a large industrial robot arm, moves totes filled with packages from conveyors onto shelves. Scooter and Kermit are both intelligent forklifts, capable of pulling several carts or stacks of plastic totes from one side of a warehouse to another. The new machines demonstrate the potential for automation to creep into more areas of warehouse and package-sorting work, a critical part of the economy as ecommerce orders soar.