Amazon Unveils Touch-Sensitive Robot "Vulcan" to Collaborate with Warehouse Workers

Amazon has introduced a new warehouse robot named Vulcan, equipped with advanced artificial intelligence and tactile sensing capabilities. Vulcan is designed to handle approximately three-quarters of the item picking and stowing tasks in Amazon’s fulfillment centers—work that has traditionally been performed by humans.

“Vulcan represents a major leap forward in robotics,” said Aaron Parness, Director of Applied Science at Amazon, in a press release. “It’s not just aware of the world—it can feel it. That opens up capabilities that our previous robots simply couldn’t achieve.”

While Vulcan isn’t Amazon’s first robot capable of picking up items, it is the first with the dexterity and sensitivity needed to operate in Amazon’s compact, fabric-covered storage compartments. Vulcan uses a robotic arm Amazon describes as “a ruler glued to a flat iron” to organize items within compartments and insert new ones. This arm is equipped with force sensors that detect the pressure and speed of contact with objects, helping avoid damage. A second arm uses a suction gripper to retrieve items and relies on an AI-powered camera to ensure it doesn't mistakenly grab multiple products at once.

The entire Vulcan system is deeply integrated with AI, trained on physical interaction data like touch and force feedback. The robot is capable of learning from failure, gradually understanding how different objects respond to touch. Amazon hopes that Vulcan’s capabilities will continue to improve over time.

According to Amazon, Vulcan is already operational in Spokane, Washington and Hamburg, Germany, having handled over 500,000 customer orders. It is primarily used to retrieve items from the top and bottom of fabric shelves up to 8 feet (2.44 meters) high—tasks that typically require workers to bend down or use ladders. This helps reduce physical strain and workplace injuries, enhancing worker safety. Vulcan can process around 75% of Amazon's inventory, and when it encounters items it cannot handle, it flags them for human intervention.

“Vulcan works alongside our employees,” Parness said. “And together, they perform better than either could alone.”

In a demonstration with CNBC, Parness added: “I don’t believe in 100% automation. If we tried to make Vulcan handle all of the picking and stowing, we’d never get there.”

Still, the introduction of Vulcan may raise concerns for Amazon’s roughly one million warehouse workers. Amazon says it has already deployed 750,000 robots, and Vulcan will soon join that fleet, with plans for gradual expansion across Europe and the U.S. in the coming years.