Amazon & 45,000 Robots

Amazon significantly expanded its army of warehouse robots in 2016, according to a report by The Seattle Times.

The newspaper — based in the same city as Amazon's global headquarters — wrote last week that the e-commerce giant now has 45,000 robots across 20 fulfillment centres.

That would be a 50% increase from the same time the year before, when the company said it had 30,000 robots working alongside 230,000 people.

Amazon bought a robotics company called Kiva Systems in 2012 for $775 million (£632 million). Kiva's robots automate the picking and packing process at large warehouses in a way that stands to help Amazon become more efficient. The robots — 16 inches tall and almost 145 kilograms — can run at 5 mph and haul packages weighing up to 317 kilograms.

"We've changed, again, the automation, the size, the scale many times, and we continue to learn and grow there," - Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky 

Read the full article here.