Amazon has over 1 million robot workers. What’s next for human employees?

The second-largest corporate employer has bet big on robot workers to scale.

The short version

• No organization in the world operates more robots than Amazon.
• The injury and illness rate for workers in the US warehouse sector has typically been more than double the average across all industries, according to the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration .
• “You have almost 2 million people working in the warehousing sector in the United States, and it’s characterized by very high turnover and very high workplace injury rates,” said Greenwood.

What happened

But robots are still far from capable of handling the many different tasks that human workers can perform. So Amazon still has a massive human workforce working in tandem with the company’s growing fleet of wheeled robots and robotic arms—and workplaces can get complicated when humans are expected to keep pace with robotic counterparts.

Why it matters

Amazon has rapidly built its robotic fleet following the pivotal decision to acquire the robotics company Kiva Systems in 2012.

Summary by Nerd News Network. Read the full article at Ars Technica via the links above and below.