Amazon has hundreds of thousands of robots in its warehouses, but that doesn’t mean all of its robot efforts are success stories.
As first reported by Business Insider and confirmed by TechCrunch, the e-commerce giant has canceled its Blue Jay warehouse robot project just months after announcing the technology.
Blue Jay, a multi-armed robot designed to sort and move packages, was unveiled in October for use in the company’s same-day delivery facilities. At the time, the company was testing the robot at a facility in South Carolina, and Amazon said it took much less time to develop Blue Jay than other warehouse robots, at just about a year, though the company credited this speed to advances in AI.
Amazon spokesperson Terrence Clark told TechCrunch that the Blue Jay was launched as a prototype, but that wasn’t disclosed in the company’s original press release.
The company plans to use Blue Jay’s core technology to “operate programs” for other robots, and employees who worked on Blue Jay will be transferred to other projects.
“We’re constantly experimenting with new ways to improve the customer experience and make our employees’ jobs safer, more efficient, and more engaging,” Clark told TechCrunch via email. “In this case, we’re actually accelerating the use of the underlying technology that was developed for Blue Jay, and nearly all of the technology will carry over and continue to support our employees across the network.”
Last year, Amazon also announced Vulcan, a robot used in storage sections of its warehouses. Vulcan is a two-armed robot, with one arm used to rearrange and move items within its compartments, and the other arm equipped with a camera and suction cup for grabbing items. Vulcan can “feel” objects it touches and is said to have been trained based on data collected from real-world interactions.
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Amazon has been developing an internal robotics program since 2012, when it acquired robotics company Kiva Systems, whose warehouse automation technology formed the foundation of Amazon’s fulfillment operations. Last July, the number of robots in the company’s warehouses exceeded 1 million.
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