Amazon asserts it has engineered a novel warehouse robot named Vulcan, possessing the capability to discern certain items through tactile perception.

The two-armed Vulcan robot, designed to handle items within Amazon's warehouse storage units, employs force sensors to identify contact with objects. One arm facilitates the rearrangement of items within a compartment, while the other, fitted with a camera and suction cup, is used for item retrieval.

Amazon states that Vulcan was trained using tangible data, encompassing force and touch feedback, to select approximately 75% of Amazon’s inventory. Furthermore, they assert its capacity for gradual self-improvement. The robot has been implemented in Spokane, Washington, and Hamburg, Germany, where it has fulfilled half a million orders thus far.

Vulcan represents the newest inclusion in Amazon's extensive collection of warehouse robots, which number in the hundreds of thousands and are deployed to process customer requests within its worldwide storage infrastructure. Despite detractors' claims that Amazon's investment in robotics aims to displace human staff, the corporation maintains otherwise, contending that robots such as Vulcan primarily enhance safety conditions in its warehouses.