Amazon Robotics (formerly Kiva Systems)

It started with Mick Mountz, who founded Kiva Systems in 2003, a company making robots that drive under warehouse shelving. Amazon bought it in 2012 for $775 million and in 2015 gave it its present name: Amazon Robotics. Since then the robots have worked almost exclusively in Amazon's logistics centers and are not sold externally. The company is headquartered in North Reading, Massachusetts. The story shows how in-house technology becomes an advantage for an entire corporation, even though outside customers can never buy it. In June 2022 Amazon showed Proteus, an autonomous transport robot that moves freely among people, and in November 2022 the Sparrow arm for picking individual products. The parent company is Amazon.com, listed on NASDAQ under the symbol AMZN. A general picture of warehouse automation, for which Amazon Robotics is the benchmark, is given in “AMR Robots in the Warehouse”, and the development of humanoids in logistics is described in “Agility Digit in Warehouses”. It is one of the most successful acquisitions in robotics: the $775 million takeover turned a startup into a foundation of the corporation's logistics.

Amazon Proteus is an autonomous mobile robot (AMR) with a 400 kg payload, carrying loaded GoCart carts freely in the same space as workers. It operates, among other places, in Amazon's fully robotized center in Gliwice, but it is not a product for sale. Amazon Sparrow is an industrial arm with 7 degrees of freedom, used for singulation: picking a single product out of a bin holding many items and placing it for onward transport. According to the manufacturer it recognizes about 65% of the catalog, and it also works in Amazon's Polish centers. The full path goes like this: Proteus carries, Sparrow sorts, and together they form a fragment of a huge logistics chain. Prices are not public, because the products are not sold. If you want to buy something similar, look at the mobile robots category and the overview “AMR Robots in the Warehouse”. Deployments are in the warehouse setting. An interesting point is that Proteus and Sparrow play entirely different roles: the first is transport, the second precise manipulation. Together they show how Amazon breaks logistics into separate tasks and matches separate machines to them. A similar approach can be seen among competitors, though no one operates at such a scale. Industrial arms from other makers are covered under “Cobots”.

Amazon Robotics is one of the biggest players in warehouse robotics, even though it sells nothing to anyone. The owner is a NASDAQ-listed corporation, and the division's funding and headcount are not public. The key difference from Locus Robotics and Geek+ is that these competitors offer mobile robots as a product to any customer. Other players in the market are Mobile Industrial Robots, AutoStore, Exotec and HAI Robotics, each with a different approach to storage and transport. As Amazon experiments with humanoids, it tests, among others, Digit from Agility Robotics, which shows that in-house technology does not rule out outside pilots. The costs and profitability of robots working in logistics are calculated much as in “Humanoid Robot TCO: How to Calculate Total Cost”. The comparison with Locus and Geek+ shows the crux: Amazon is at once a huge user and producer of warehouse robots, yet does not compete for outside customers. That model sets it apart from every other company we cover.

In Poland, Amazon's robots work in fulfillment centers, and the best-known example is Gliwice, where Proteus operates in a fully robotized facility. Sparrow also works in Polish centers. These are the corporation's own deployments, not an offer for local companies: there is no dealer, no price list and no way to buy. For a Polish entrepreneur this means Amazon Robotics is more an inspiration than a supplier; the realistic alternative is the AMRs described in “AMR Robots in the Warehouse”. We do not have the number of robots in Polish centers, so we do not give it. Anyone looking for inspiration will find examples of deployments in the warehouse setting.

Amazon Robotics is the reference point for all warehouse automation, but not a supplier. You cannot buy it, so its value to the reader is as a model: it shows where logistics is heading. For companies looking for solutions on their own premises, we recommend robots from MiR, Locus and Geek+. For the reader this means a lesson in process design, not a shopping list. If you are looking for a robot for your own warehouse, look to the competitors who actually sell.