"Julie" meet "Kiva."
Amazon is buying Kiva Systems, a company that makes robots used in warehouses, for $775 million. Amazon has been expanding its network of warehouses around the country and expanded its work force (of humans) as a result.
According to the Wall Street Journal, "to complete an order, Kiva's squat orange robots fetch tall movable shelves, or pods, that have the items needed, bringing them to the human 'picker.' A laser pointer tells the human which item needs to be picked from each shelf. The worker, who stays in one place, scans a bar code to confirm it is the right item. It's placed in the order box, which sits on another one of the mobile pods. New pods arrive steadily with additional items as needed. Items are grouped together to fulfill the orders. Pods filled with completed orders are taken by the robots to the shipping door, where a human tapes them closed in preparation for final transport."
Kiva robots are already used in warehouses operated by two Amazon subsidiaries, Zappos.com and Diapers.com.
Kiva says that "a packer working with its robots can fulfill three to four times as many orders per hour."
