This is Amazon’s Vulcan: the companies new robot designed to make life easier for workers. While it is not the first robot that can pick things up, it has sensors to understand when and how it makes contact with an object. Vulcan can manipulate objects within 1 foot square of space. It uses an end of arm tooling with force feedback sensors to tell how hard it is pushing or holding things.
Vulcan has an arm to carry a camera snd suction cup. As the company explains:
The camera looks at the compartment and picks out the item to be grabbed, along with the best spot to hold it by. While the suction cup grabs it, the camera watches to make sure it took the right thing and only the right thing
According to Amazon, this robot can pick about 75% of all types Amazon stores at its fulfillment centers.
[HT]
