By James Pero For Dailymail.com
Published: 20:03 BST, 2 May 2019 | Updated: 20:35 BST, 2 May 2019
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Amazon said that by the end of the next decade packages in the company's warehouses could be readied for delivery without touching a single human hand.
In a report from Reuters, Director of Amazon Robotics Fulfillment, Scott Anderson, told reporters that there is still plenty of progress to be made before robots take over its warehouses.
'In the current form, the technology is very limited. The technology is very far from the fully automated workstation that we would need,' Anderson told Reuters in a walk through of one of its facilities in Baltimore.
Robots still have a long way to go before the replace human hands in Amazon's factories said one of the company's executives in a recent walk through of a facility in Baltimore.
The breakthrough of the facility comes on the heels of a report from The Verge that revealed hundreds of workers in Amazon's Baltimore fulfillment center were fired thanks to, or by, an automated system designed to track employees performance.
While robots have apparently been busy tracking and in some cases firing employees, Amazon said more physical manifestations of the company's technology are struggling to master some key tasks.
In particular, Anderson told Reuters that its robots' are lagging in the fine-motor skills department -- current technology has trouble fishing out individual and specific products from a bin loaded with other items.
To fully reap the benefits of a robots capabilities, the company also looks to train them how to pick up multiple packages at one time.
In some cases, however, robots have already excelled in automating parts of warehouse workers' jobs like locating and moving bins of packages and delivering them to their desired location.
According to a report from NJTV, the robots can handle about 1,300 lbs.
Likewise, a bird-like automaton from the robotics company, Boston Dynamics, called 'Handle' caught headlines earlier this month for its demonstration in transporting packages to pallet boxes. That robot is still a prototype according to the company.
Various robots intent on automating the fulfillment process are under development by the company, including one from Boston Dynamics.
Amazon's predictions of fully automating warehouses in the next decade mirror a recent report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) which projected that by 2050 nearly half of all jobs will be radically altered or completely lost to automation.
Estimates of Amazon's automation timetable come at a time when complaints from some of the leaders' of its workers unions have been particularly pointed.
In addition to fallout
