Amazon Vulcan

2025-05-07 · Publisher : Amazon · Domain : Robotics

Amazon unveils Vulcan in Dortmund: its first robot with a sense of touch, stowing and picking items in tightly packed storage pods thanks to force-feedback sensors.

### What changes Unveiled on May 7, 2025 at the "Delivering the Future" event in Dortmund, Vulcan is Amazon's first robot with a sense of touch. Where earlier arms relied mostly on vision, Vulcan combines cameras with force-feedback sensors to know when it touches an object and how hard. It can gently push items aside in a packed compartment to make room, without damaging them. ### Specifications - End-of-arm tool described by Amazon as "a ruler stuck onto a hair straightener", fitted with force sensors. - Handles about 75% of the item types stored in fulfillment centers, at a pace comparable to an employee. - Works the top rows (about 8 feet) and bottom rows of storage pods, avoiding ladders and awkward postures. - Deployed in Spokane (Washington) and Hamburg, with expansion planned across Europe and the US. ### Why it matters Manipulating varied objects in cluttered spaces remains one of the hardest problems in warehouse robotics. By adding touch, Amazon tackles stowing, until now a very manual task. The robot does not work alone: it hands items it cannot grasp back to a human. ### Key takeaways Vulcan marks the shift from vision-only to multimodal perception in Amazon's production robots, three years after the project started.

Tags : Logistique, Entrepôt, Toucher, Manipulation, États-Unis