Amazon’s Robotics Push Is Broadening
Amazon’s recent robotics activity spans delivery, warehouse automation, humanoids and research.
Amazon acquired RIVR in March after backing it through the Industrial Innovation Fund alongside Bezos Expeditions. The ETH Zurich spinout builds wheeled-legged robots for delivery between vans and doors.
In March, Amazon announced an AU$750 million robotics fulfillment center in Australia with planned capacity above 125 million packages annually.
Amazon also added a more overt humanoid angle with its acquisition of Fauna Robotics. The startup had been developing Sprout, a small humanoid designed for human environments, giving Amazon exposure to a very different category of robotics than warehouse systems or last mile delivery.
Reuters reported that Amazon had shelved Blue Jay, a ceiling-mounted robot for same-day fulfillment sites, after high costs and integration complexity made scaling difficult. Reuters also reported more than 100 cuts in the robotics unit.
Perceptive Humanoid Parkour, released by Amazon researchers with collaborators from UC Berkeley, Stanford, and CMU, uses a Unitree G1 to chain dynamic parkour skills with onboard depth sensing.
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