Amazon has lots of of hundreds of robots in its warehouses, however that doesn’t imply all of its robotic initiatives are a hit story.
The ecommerce large has halted its Blue Jay warehouse robotics venture simply months after unveiling the tech, as initially reported by Enterprise Insider and confirmed by TechCrunch.
Blue Jay, a multi-armed robotic designed to type and transfer packages, was unveiled in October to be used within the firm’s same-day supply services. On the time, the corporate was testing the robots at a facility in South Carolina and mentioned it took Amazon considerably much less time to develop Blue Jay — solely a couple of 12 months— than it did to develop its different warehouse robots, a pace the corporate credited to developments in AI.
Amazon spokesperson Terrance Clark instructed TechCrunch that Blue Jay was launched as a prototype — though that was not made clear within the firm’s authentic press launch.
The corporate plans to make use of Blue Jay’s core know-how for different robotics “manipulation packages” with staff who labored on Blue Jay being moved to different tasks.
“We’re all the time experimenting with new methods to enhance the shopper expertise and make work safer, extra environment friendly, and extra participating for our staff,” Clark instructed TechCrunch over e-mail. “On this case, we’re truly accelerating the usage of the underlying know-how developed for Blue Jay, and practically all the applied sciences are being carried over and can proceed to assist staff throughout our community.”
Amazon additionally unveiled the Vulcan robotic final 12 months, which is used within the storage compartments of the corporate’s warehouses. Vulcan is a two-armed robotic, with one arm meant to rearrange and transfer gadgets in a compartment whereas the opposite is provided with a digicam and suction cups to seize items. The Vulcan can allegedly “really feel” the objects that it touches and was educated on information gathered from real-world interactions.
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June 23, 2026
Amazon has been growing its inner robotics program since 2012 when it bought Kiva Programs, a robotics firm whose warehouse automation know-how shaped the inspiration of Amazon’s success operations. It surpassed 1 million robots in its warehouses final July.