About an hour outside of Boston, Amazon is building the future of its warehouse business. Here, in a 350,000-square-foot facility, the shipping behemoth has headquartered its robotics hub, where the company designs, tests, and manufactures cutting-edge machines that will operate side by side with workers in its fulfillment centers—and, in time, replace many of them.
Amazon is not known for its robotics prowess, but the e-commerce giant has quietly invested billions of dollars in the field for more than a decade, beginning with its acquisition of warehouse automation startup Kiva Systems for $775 million in 2012. Robotics is now central to Amazon’s efficiency and safety goals as the company seeks to produce autonomous, mobile machines that can pick up and sort packages.
