Amazon halts Blue Jay robotics project after less than six months

Amazon has hundreds of thousands of robots successful its warehouses, but that doesn’t mean each of its robotic initiatives are a occurrence story.

The ecommerce elephantine has halted its Blue Jay warehouse robotics task conscionable months aft unveiling the tech, arsenic primitively reported by Business Insider and confirmed by TechCrunch.

Blue Jay, a multi-armed robot designed to benignant and determination packages, was unveiled successful October for usage successful the company’s same-day transportation facilities. At the time, the institution was investigating the robots astatine a installation successful South Carolina and said it took Amazon significantly little clip to make Blue Jay — lone astir a year— than it did to make its different warehouse robots, a velocity the institution credited to advancements successful AI.

Amazon spokesperson Terrance Clark told TechCrunch that Blue Jay was launched arsenic a prototype — though that was not made wide successful the company’s archetypal property release.

The institution plans to usage Blue Jay’s halfway exertion for different robotics “manipulation programs” with employees who worked connected Blue Jay being moved to different projects.

“We’re ever experimenting with caller ways to amended the lawsuit acquisition and marque enactment safer, much efficient, and much engaging for our employees,” Clark told TechCrunch implicit email. “In this case, we’re really accelerating the usage of the underlying exertion developed for Blue Jay, and astir each of the technologies are being carried implicit and volition proceed to enactment employees crossed our network.”

Amazon besides unveiled the Vulcan robot past year, which is utilized successful the retention compartments of the company’s warehouses. Vulcan is simply a two-armed robot, with 1 limb meant to rearrange and determination items successful a compartment portion the different is equipped with a camera and suction cups to drawback goods. The Vulcan tin allegedly “feel” the objects that it touches and was trained connected information gathered from real-world interactions.

Amazon has been processing its interior robotics programme since 2012 erstwhile it purchased Kiva Systems, a robotics institution whose warehouse automation exertion formed the instauration of Amazon’s fulfillment operations. It surpassed 1 cardinal robots successful its warehouses past July.