Amazon Introduces Vulcan, the Robot with a Sense of Touch

Amazon Introduces Vulcan, the Robot with a Sense of TouchWhat comes naturally to many humans remains an insurmountable challenge for most robots: feeling and perceiving the size, roughness, and thickness of a surface by touch.

An important challenge that Amazon takes up by presenting Vulcan, the company's first "sensitive" arm and opening up new possibilities for the use of robotics in warehouses.

This isn’t Amazon’s first robot to pick up items: systems in use today like Sparrow, Cardinal, and Robin use machine vision and suction cups to move individual products or packages prepared by warehouse workers. Similarly, robots like Proteus, Titan, and Hercules lift and transport entire carts of merchandise inside fulfillment centers.

Vulcan, however, is the first to have a “sense of touch”, that is, the ability to understand when and how it comes into contact with an object and to adapt its grip and pressure accordingly.

It can easily manipulate items inside compartments to make room for what it needs to put away, and it also knows when it makes contact and how much force it’s applying, allowing it to stop before causing damage, according to Amazon. The robot can also pick up an object, the company explained, which first showed off the robot at its Delivering the Future event at the Last Mile Innovation Center in Dortmund, Germany, noting that it can recognize which object to grab and where best to pick it up.