robot

Amazon Robotics Creates Safety Device

Jan. 25, 2019
A new safety vest from Amazon allows robots to detect warehouse workers from farther away and change its route to avoid them.

With the increase of robots performing tasks in the warehouse, there is a risk of injury.

Just this past December an Amazon robot tore open a can of bear repellent at the company's New Jersey warehouse sending 24 workers to the hospital. Thirty other workers were treated on the scene.

One solution to this problem is a wearable safety-type vest that can alert a robot that a person is around.

Last year Amazon began rolling out such a belt, as reported by Brian Heater in TechCrunch.

Designed by Amazon Robotics, the vest is comprised of a pair of suspenders, with built-in sensors that are attached to an electronic utility belt.

“In the past, associates would mark out the grid of cells where they would be working in order to enable the robotic traffic planner to smartly route around that region. Amazon Robotics vice president Brad Porter told TechCrunch.

"What the vest allows the robots to do is detect the human from farther away and smartly update its travel plan to steer clear without the need

for the associate to explicitly mark out those zones.”

Read the full article here.

About the Author

Stefanie Valentic EHS Today | Senior Editor

Stefanie Valentic is an award-winning senior editor with EHS Today.

A native of Cleveland, Ohio, she has been in B2B publishing for more than ten years. Her work has spanned many industries including crop protection, landscaping, horticulture and pest control.

In 2017, Valentic received ASBPE's regional bronze award for her column Sincerely Stefanie. She graduated in 2009 with a B.S. in Magazine Journalism from Ohio University's E.W. Scripps School of Journalism.