Automating warehouse operations can reduce logistics overhead costs, ultimately driving down the final price for consumers, increasing the speed of delivery, and enhancing the resiliency to market fluctuations. This extended abstract showcases a large-scale package manipulation from unstructured piles in Amazon Robotics' Robot Induction (Robin) fleet, which is used for picking and singulating up to 6 million packages per day and so far has manipulated over 2 billion packages. It describes the various heuristic methods developed over time and their successor, which utilizes a pick success predictor trained on real production data. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this work is the first large-scale deployment of learned pick quality estimation methods in a real production system.

Robin uses its suction gripper to pick packages from a conveyor belt. Thousands of packages pass through Amazon's fulfillment centers every day. More and more of those packages are picked up, scanned, and organized by Amazon's Robin robotic arm. Robin picks packages from a conveyor belt with its suction gripper, scans them and then places them on a drive robot that routes it to the correct loading dock. Robin's job is particularly difficult because of its rapidly changing environment.

A DECADE AGO Amazon started to introduce robots into its "fulfilment centres", as online retailers call their giant distribution warehouses. Instead of having people wandering up and down rows of shelves picking goods to complete orders, the machines would lift and then carry the shelves to the pickers. That saved time and money. Amazon now has more than 350,000 robots of various sorts deployed worldwide. But it is not enough to secure its future.

Amazon is expanding its footprint in the Bay State, adding a 350,000-square-foot Westboro outpost that houses corporate offices, research and development labs, and a robotics manufacturing space. "This new innovation and manufacturing hub, along with its sister site up in North Reading, places Amazon robotics at the epicenter of robotics innovation here in Massachusetts for years to come," said Scott Dresser, vice president of robotics at Amazon. The site, once home to drugmaker AstraZeneca, has been open for a few months and was buzzing with activity Thursday afternoon during the official ribbon-cutting for the site, with Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito and Housing and Economic Development Secretary Mike Kennealy in attendance. Amazon began introducing robots into its facilities in 2012, and since then, has also added over a million employees to work alongside the more than 350,000 robots. Though Amazon Robotics has had a North Reading site for about 10 years, which hosts similar roles to the Westboro facility, the new one "is the first in terms of size and scale of operations for Amazon Robotics," according to an Amazon spokesperson.

Amazon and MIT today announced the establishment of the Science Hub, a collaboration that will focus on areas of mutual interest, beginning with artificial intelligence and robotics in the first year. To get the hub started, Amazon will provide gift and sponsored research funding over the next five years to support research and academic fellowships on campus. The primary goals of the hub are to ensure the benefits of AI and robotics innovations are shared broadly -- both through education and by advancing research -- and to broaden participation in the research from diverse, interdisciplinary scholars, and other innovators. "AI and robotics have an enormous impact on every aspect of our lives, fundamentally changing how we work, learn, access resources and services, and connect to one another -- so it's critical we conduct research that advances the field in ways that are responsible, effective, and beneficial to society," said Aude Oliva, a senior research scientist and director of strategic industry engagement in the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing. "We take an expansive view of AI and robotics to include expertise from across all five of the Institute's schools. We're excited by the potential of collaborations with industry leaders who bring their insights to the research, want to support the next generation of talent, and are best positioned to implement what is learned."

One area that personally fascinates me is how digital technologies are increasingly shaping the physical spaces around us, such as our homes and workplaces. Amazon Alexa is a great example of this--an on-demand AI assistant that exists in the cloud but that we can access with our voices to control the lighting in our homes, run our sprinklers, and lock our doors. This is the embodiment of our physical environment evolving due to enhancements provided by digital technologies. The natural language processing, machine learning models, speech synthesis, and all of the other complexity is performed in a digital system that sits beyond the walls of your home but is able to connect to that door lock and perform a physical action on your behalf. For an end user, the beauty of Alexa is that they don't have to know how any of this works, which parts are physical or digital; it just makes their lives better.

A new report reveals that robots working in Amazon fulfillment centers are leading to more injuries among human employees - although the e-commerce giant claims the technology reduces incidents. Based on internal records from 150 warehouses, serious injuries were 50 percent higher at facilities with robots than those without, according to the Center for Investigative Reporting's news site, Reveal. There were 14,000 serious injuries in 2019 - a spike of nearly 33 percent from 2015, and nearly double the industry average. The overall injury rate for the 150 facilities was also almost double the industry standard, according to Reveal. Amazon insisted its numbers are inflated because it encourages workers to report even minor incidents.

Guess who's getting used to working with robots in their everyday lives? The very same warehouse workers once predicted to be losing their jobs to mechanical replacements. According to their makers, the machines should take on the most mundane and physically strenuous tasks. "They weigh a lot," Amazon worker Amanda Taillon said during the pre-Christmas rush at a company warehouse in Connecticut. Taillon's job is to enter a cage and tame Amazon's wheeled warehouse robots for long enough to pick up a fallen toy or relieve a traffic jam. She straps on a light-up utility belt that works like a superhero's force field, commanding the nearest robots to abruptly halt and the others to slow down or adjust their routes.

We're bringing TC Sessions: Robotics AI back to UC Berkeley on March 3, and we're excited to announce our jam-packed agenda. For months we've been recruiting speakers from the ranks of the most innovative founders, top technologists and hard-charging VCs working in robotics and AI, and the speaker line-up will capture the remarkable acceleration across the field in the past year. New for this year, we will be hosting our very first pitch-off competition for early-stage robotics companies. There is still time to submit your application. What better way to mark the occasion than to grab an early-bird ticket ($150 savings) right now and right here before prices increase.

Guess who's getting used to working with robots in their everyday lives? The very same warehouse workers once predicted to be losing their jobs to mechanical replacements. According to their makers, the machines should take on the most mundane and physically strenuous tasks. "They weigh a lot," Amazon worker Amanda Taillon said during the pre-Christmas rush at a company warehouse in Connecticut. Taillon's job is to enter a cage and tame Amazon's wheeled warehouse robots for long enough to pick up a fallen toy or relieve a traffic jam. She straps on a light-up utility belt that works like a superhero's force field, commanding the nearest robots to abruptly halt and the others to slow down or adjust their routes.