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Amazon has over 1 million robot workers. What’s next for human employees?

No organization in the world operates more robots than Amazon. The company already has more than 1 million robots working in warehouses around the clock to make tens of millions of same-day and one-day package deliveries happen on a daily basis—and Amazon is poised to significantly grow that robotic fleet in the coming years as it establishes new factories to churn out increasingly more capable robot workers.

世界上没有任何组织比亚马逊运营着更多的机器人。该公司已经在仓库中拥有超过 100 万台机器人全天候工作，以实现每天数千万次的当日达和次日达包裹配送。随着亚马逊建立新的工厂来生产能力日益强大的机器人，该公司准备在未来几年内大幅扩大其机器人队伍。

Despite deploying so many robots, Amazon is also the second-largest corporate employer in the world, with more than 1.5 million full-time and part-time human workers, according to its 2025 annual report. Amazon executives say that the growing robot fleet has eased the burden on its human workforce by taking on the toughest fulfillment center tasks that carry the greatest risks of physical fatigue and injury.

尽管部署了如此多的机器人，但根据其 2025 年年度报告，亚马逊仍然是全球第二大企业雇主，拥有超过 150 万名全职和兼职员工。亚马逊高管表示，不断增长的机器人队伍通过承担履约中心最艰巨、且最容易导致身体疲劳和受伤的任务，减轻了人类员工的负担。

But labor advocacy groups and independent researchers point to evidence suggesting that warehouse automation driven by AI is not all upside for the humans who work alongside robots. “For the last 100 years, most of the automation that we’ve seen usually happens away from workers—you’re taking that high-risk task away from the worker, and you’re doing so in a way that is not physically proximate,” Brian Greenwood, professor of business at George Mason University, told Ars. “The rise of collaborative robots really changes that dynamic for two reasons: one is that it is physically proximate, and two, the robot has the ability to dictate the pace of work.”

然而，劳工权益组织和独立研究人员指出，有证据表明，由人工智能驱动的仓库自动化对于与机器人并肩工作的人类来说并非全是好处。乔治梅森大学商学教授布莱恩·格林伍德（Brian Greenwood）告诉 Ars：“在过去 100 年里，我们所见的大多数自动化通常发生在远离工人的地方——你将高风险任务从工人手中拿走，而且这种方式在物理上是不靠近工人的。协作机器人的兴起确实改变了这种动态，原因有二：一是它在物理上是靠近工人的，二是机器人有能力决定工作节奏。”

In many ways, robotics and AI are well suited to the relentless pace of work that is already happening inside e-commerce fulfillment centers. Amazon’s promise of speedy deliveries for its 200 million Prime subscribers in particular requires hundreds of thousands of human employees to speedily assemble and ship out customer orders that often combine a dizzying array of products.

在许多方面，机器人技术和人工智能非常适合电子商务履约中心内已经存在的无情工作节奏。特别是亚马逊对其 2 亿 Prime 会员承诺的快速配送，需要数十万名人类员工迅速组装并发出通常包含令人眼花缭乱的各种产品的客户订单。

Much of the work in fulfillment centers also frequently involves “dull, dirty and dangerous” tasks that people may prefer to hand over to robots. The injury and illness rate for workers in the US warehouse sector has typically been more than double the average across all industries, according to the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration. “You have almost 2 million people working in the warehousing sector in the United States, and it’s characterized by very high turnover and very high workplace injury rates,” said Greenwood.

履约中心的大部分工作也经常涉及人们可能更愿意交给机器人处理的“枯燥、肮脏和危险”的任务。根据美国职业安全与健康管理局的数据，美国仓储行业工人的工伤和疾病率通常是所有行业平均水平的两倍多。格林伍德说：“美国仓储行业有近 200 万人工作，其特点是极高的人员流动率和极高的工伤率。”

But robots are still far from capable of handling the many different tasks that human workers can perform. So Amazon still has a massive human workforce working in tandem with the company’s growing fleet of wheeled robots and robotic arms—and workplaces can get complicated when humans are expected to keep pace with robotic counterparts.

但机器人距离处理人类工人可以执行的许多不同任务还差得很远。因此，亚马逊仍然拥有庞大的人类劳动力，与公司不断增长的轮式机器人和机械臂队伍协同工作——当人类被要求跟上机器人同伴的步伐时，工作场所可能会变得复杂。

Amazon’s robotic era: Amazon has rapidly built its robotic fleet following the pivotal decision to acquire the robotics company Kiva Systems in 2012. Kiva was among the earliest companies to pioneer wheeled mobile robots that bring racks of items to warehouse workers, instead of requiring people to continually walk around grabbing items off of shelves inside fulfillment centers.

亚马逊的机器人时代：在 2012 年做出收购机器人公司 Kiva Systems 的关键决定后，亚马逊迅速建立了其机器人队伍。Kiva 是最早开创轮式移动机器人的公司之一，这些机器人将货架带给仓库工人，而不是要求人们在履约中心内不断走动从货架上抓取物品。

Since the acquisition, Kiva was renamed Amazon Robotics and has focused on deploying an array of mobile robots and robotic arms that Amazon primarily manufactures in-house at facilities in Massachusetts. This year, the company also announced it would build additional production factories in Austin, Texas, and Greenwood, Indiana, to churn out even more robots in the future.

自收购以来，Kiva 更名为亚马逊机器人技术公司（Amazon Robotics），并专注于部署一系列移动机器人和机械臂，这些设备主要由亚马逊在马萨诸塞州的工厂内部制造。今年，该公司还宣布将在德克萨斯州奥斯汀和印第安纳州格林伍德建立额外的生产工厂，以便在未来生产更多的机器人。

“There’s a theme of how we look at the challenges that we can help our associates and our employees with, and how we can make our customers’ lives better through these technologies,” Scott Dresser, vice president of Amazon Robotics, told Ars. “Each step of the way, [we are] tackling a hard or deep set of technical challenges to achieve that goal.”

亚马逊机器人技术公司副总裁斯科特·德雷瑟（Scott Dresser）告诉 Ars：“我们关注的主题是如何看待我们可以帮助同事和员工解决的挑战，以及如何通过这些技术让客户的生活变得更好。在每一步中，我们都在攻克一系列艰巨或深层的技术挑战，以实现这一目标。”

Most of Amazon’s million-robot fleet still consists of those wheeled mobile robots. The company claims that its robotic Sequoia system can identify and store items up to 75 percent faster at fulfillment centers by coordinating swarms of such robots. Hercules and Titan robots, the size of a pool table or a baby grand piano, respectively, roam warehouse aisles to retrieve tall fabric shelving units called pods packed with plastic tote crates and bring them to human employees at various workstations.

亚马逊百万机器人队伍中的大部分仍然由那些轮式移动机器人组成。该公司声称，其机器人 Sequoia 系统通过协调此类机器人群，可以在履约中心将物品识别和存储的速度提高多达 75%。Hercules 和 Titan 机器人（大小分别相当于台球桌或小型三角钢琴）在仓库过道中穿行，以检索装满塑料手提箱的名为“货架”（pods）的高大织物货架单元，并将它们带到各个工作站的人类员工面前。

Such mobile robots typically follow grid lines of stickers laid out on the floor and stay within fenced-in areas away from human employees. But the newest mobile robot, called Proteus, has sensors that allow it to operate safely around humans and other objects in a more free-roaming role. Those swarms of mobile robots traveling through narrow lanes between rows of storage pods can also sometimes create robotic traffic jams. That is why Amazon began coordinating its robots using a suite of AI foundation models collectively named DeepFleet, which can help predict potential robot congestion ahead of time.

此类移动机器人通常沿着地板上铺设的贴纸网格线行驶，并保持在远离人类员工的围栏区域内。但最新的移动机器人 Proteus 配备了传感器，使其能够以更自由漫游的角色在人类和其他物体周围安全运行。那些在成排存储货架之间的狭窄通道中穿行的移动机器人群有时也会造成机器人交通拥堵。这就是为什么亚马逊开始使用一套统称为 DeepFleet 的人工智能基础模型来协调其机器人，这有助于提前预测潜在的机器人拥堵。

More recently, Amazon has been deploying a growing number of robotic arms that can grab items stowed high up inside inventory pods, sort packages and place them in carts or on top of mobile robots, and handle the many different individual products that Amazon customers order when shopping online. The company expects to more than double its existing fleet of robotic arms this year, according to Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky in a July earnings call. When Ars sought clarification, Dresser described the current number of deployed robotic arms as being in the single-digit thousands.

最近，亚马逊部署了越来越多的机械臂，它们可以抓取存放在库存货架高处的物品、分拣包裹并将其放入推车或移动机器人顶部，并处理亚马逊客户在网上购物时订购的许多不同的个人产品。据亚马逊首席财务官布莱恩·奥尔萨夫斯基（Brian Olsavsky）在 7 月份的财报电话会议上表示，该公司预计今年其现有的机械臂数量将增加一倍以上。当 Ars 寻求澄清时，德雷瑟将目前部署的机械臂数量描述为几千台。

A robotic arm system called Cardinal uses a suction system to grab boxes from a pile of Amazon packages and stack them inside a rolling cart. Credit: Amazon

一种名为 Cardinal 的机械臂系统使用吸力系统从一堆亚马逊包裹中抓取盒子，并将它们堆叠在滚动推车内。图片来源：亚马逊