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.
I had the opportunity to visit the Massachusetts hub earlier in March—the new center opened in 2023 as an offshoot of the original Kiva facilities, which are about 50 miles away and still operational. Amazon handles the entire design and manufacturing process in-house, with programmers, hardware engineers, and testers all working under one roof to produce robots that will soon operate across Amazon’s global fulfillment network.
Joseph Quinlivan, Amazon’s vice president of global robotics, has been with the company for its entire robotics journey, starting at Kiva and joining Amazon after the acquisition. “The great thing about Amazon is that it operates in many ways like a startup and has a startup mentality of speed,” he told me. “You don’t get bogged down with bureaucracy.”
He gave me a tour of Amazon’s innovative approach to robotic design, which includes brainstorming rooms for software engineers that are cluttered with whiteboards and overlook the sprawling factory floors. Quinlivan showed me his personal favorite: a robot called Proteus, which resembles an oversized Roomba, transports bins carrying packages, and can operate independently and side by side with employees.
The future of work
Robots like Proteus are designed to replace repetitive motions by warehouse workers. Injuries are a major concern for the $2 trillion company, especially after a Senate investigation last year led by progressive Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders put a spotlight on safety failures at Amazon’s fulfillment centers. The investigation found that injuries are nearly twice as high as the industry average. Amazon rejected the investigation’s findings, describing it as “an attempt to collect information and twist it to support a false narrative.”
Still, Quinlivan acknowledged that Amazon’s push into robotics is focused on the “most challenging tasks” carried out by workers, such as lifting and moving items. “[Safety] is front and center,” Quinlivan said, arguing that the newer generation of machines will be able to automate rote tasks 10-fold more than the previous one. “That’s where we start.”
Automation, of course, also conjures fears of replacement. Amazon says that it has invested more than $1 billion in upskilling, or training employees for different roles. “It’s creating new, exciting jobs and opportunities for potentially a group of people that wouldn’t have that opportunity,” Quinlivan said.
Robotics is integral to Amazon’s plans to get packages from your shopping cart to your door with increasing speed. But as the company fends off accusations of worker safety issues and job loss, its rapidly evolving slate of machines is also a symbol of the company’s relentless pursuit of productivity.