Amazon has introduced a new robot called Proteus to keep its warehouse workers safer and more efficient. But experts say robots alone won’t cut employee injuries.
Since 2014, when robots were first installed in Amazon’s warehouses, the company’s management has repeatedly claimed that robots have improved worker safety. But Amazon records obtained by the Reveal news podcast show that warehouses with robots experienced more serious injuries between 2016 and 2019 than other warehouses. It is a fact that the introduction of robots has increased the amount of work assigned to individuals, which suggests that the safety of employees has decreased.
A Washington Post analysis of reports Amazon submitted to the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) found that about twice as many serious injuries occurred in Amazon warehouses in 2020 compared to other warehouses. I found out. A separate analysis of OSHA data by the Trade Union Federation’s Center for Strategic Organizations (SOC) found similar trends in 2021.
Amazon unveiled a machine called Proteus at the end of June 2022, billing it as the company’s first fully mobile collaborative robot. And Amazon executives have repeatedly argued that the robot should improve worker safety.
Initially, Proteus will be responsible for hauling packages only around shipping areas within fulfillment centers. And Amazon hopes to eventually allow robots to carry packages from one end of the warehouse to the other, working in direct contact with humans.
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A mysterious new robot
Ty Brady, chief technologist at Amazon Robotics, said Amazon wouldn’t run Proteus in a way that would hurt anyone.
“Just hearing the word ‘hurt’ makes me feel like myself,” says Brady. “We are working tirelessly and taking focused measures to reduce injuries in our facilities. I am
An Amazon spokesperson said OSHA data showed that accident rates for other major retailers increased from 2019 to 2021, while accident rates for Amazon employees declined. I am saying it should be. But other analyzes of Amazon’s report consistently showed the company’s injury rate to be significantly higher than others, and a spokeswoman declined to comment.
Brady likens Proteus to a waiter at a buffet party, keeping his distance from people and slowing down when he’s about to collide. Proteus uses built-in sensors to maintain what is known as a “safety bubble”. It senses surrounding people and obstacles, and expands or contracts this “safety bubble” depending on the situation.
Proteus immediately stops when computer vision detects that something is blocking its path. When it sees a person approaching a “safety bubble” around its path, Proteus slows down and stays at least half a meter away from the person or obstacle.
Proteus currently moves at a speed of about 1.5 meters per second, equivalent to a brisk human walk. Proceed while indicating the direction of travel with a green light toward the floor, emitting an audible alarm if necessary.
An Amazon spokesperson declined to detail what sensors Proteus uses to detect people and objects around it. It also declined to answer the question of whether Proteus’ vision system could distinguish between people with different skin tones, or if it was tested.
Amazon has traditionally separated the workplaces of humans and robots. However, since 2021, robots have been placed near humans and given nicknames such as “Scooter” and “Kermit” after the Muppets from “Sesame Street. ” The first Proteus was called “Bart,” according to a spokesperson.
Amazon’s introduction of Proteus came a decade after it acquired Kiva Systems, the predecessor of Amazon Robotics. Kiva-era robots can take up to 1,000 pounds (450 kg) of packages at a time from warehouses and deliver them to human pickers, according to customer orders. However, no humans are allowed in the working area of Kiva’s robots.
Injuries cannot be reduced simply by introducing robots
Erik Froomin, director of health and safety at the SOC, said the much-hyped new collision-avoiding robot is the number one cause of injuries at Amazon facilities. said that the attention of the
“Amazon is a company that knows how to put its employees at risk in novel and flashy ways,” says Frumin. “Proteus could also pose a new threat to workers, but even more worrying is Amazon’s complete blindness to the dangers it should be aware of.”
Such hazards, Frumin says, are those that force you to perform quick, repetitive tasks that are prone to injury, such as tightly loading a truck bed or operating a manual pallet jack.
Frumin is one of the authors of the SOC’s April 2022 analysis of Amazon’s submissions to OSHA.
Since 2017, only 2020 has seen a decline in Amazon’s injury rate, according to the SOC’s analysis. This is because the workload of workers in 2020 was temporarily reduced due to the impact of the new coronavirus pandemic. In the following 2021, the accident rate increased by 20%, according to the report.
Amazon also employs one in three warehouse workers in the U.S., yet half of all injuries occur at facilities it operates. Ninety percent of injuries at Amazon facilities were so severe that the person involved lost work or was unable to return to normal work.
Amazon’s warehouse in Washington state, where Amazon is headquartered, was inspected by state regulators in March 2022 for “willful and gross violations” of safety protocols that could lead to lower back and upper extremity injuries. A fine of $60,000 (about 8.22 million yen) has been imposed.
Proteus was unveiled at Amazon’s re:MARS event in June 2022, alongside other technologies that it says will help improve the safety of warehouse workers. A camera system called “AR ID” automatically identifies packages, eliminating the need for workers to hold a scanner to read barcodes.
A robot called “Cardinal” lifts packages weighing up to 50 pounds, while another once called “Arnie” fills containers and places them in storage. A human doing this would have to climb up and down a number of stairs to get the items into the high cart.
Employee friendly measures needed
According to Debbie Berkowitz, a senior policy adviser and staff representative for OSHA during the Obama administration, Amazon significantly increased its use of robots in its warehouses during the Trump administration, but government officials at the time said: It is said that they did not immediately respond to reports of the high rate of injury accidents.
“No one was paying attention when the accidents started to rise,” says Berkowitz. Berkowitz was director of safety for the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) in the 1980s and 1990s, negotiating with companies that operated warehouses for supermarket inventories.
“In the end, I think it is the consumer who will benefit from the introduction of robots, and the workers who will be forced to work harder and have to work harder, will only lose out,” Berkowitz says. When Amazon started increasing its use of robots, it failed to take into account the obvious fact that people have different body sizes. Berkowitz said he believes musculoskeletal injuries have increased.
Amazon Robotics’ Brady says he hopes to reduce repetitive tasks and heavy lifting, and reduce the incidence of musculoskeletal injuries. “Every time we have an accident, we look at the situation and ask ourselves, ‘How can we improve the system to prevent it from happening again?'” Brady says. In June 2022, Amazon pledged to reduce musculoskeletal injuries and risk factors by 25% by 2025.
Berkowitz says that if Amazon would let him handle the safety of its warehouse workers, he would hire an ergonomics expert to visit all of Amazon’s fulfillment centers. After asking experts to interview workers, review injury accident records, and identify jobs with a high number of accident reports, the company hopes to begin considering various specification changes to better protect workers.. “These professionals may be the real leaders in the current situation.”
