Vulcan is built on advances in robotics, engineering, and physical AI. Amazon
The robot, which was unveiled during the company’s ‘Delivering the Future’ event, marks a giant leap toward more nimble, perceptive machines that don’t just see their environment but physically respond to it.
“Vulcan represents a fundamental leap forward in robotics,” Aaron Parness, Amazon’s director of applied science, said.
“It’s not just seeing the world, it’s feeling it, enabling capabilities that were impossible for Amazon robots until now.”
Equipped with tactile sensors, Vulcan can detect contact, adjust its grip in real time, and handle objects with far greater precision than traditional industrial robots, bringing a new kind of intelligence to the warehouse floor.
Vulcan uses an arm that carries a camera and a suction cup to pick items from our storage pods
The robot is operating at Amazon’s fulfillment centers, helping employees’ jobs safer and easier while moving customers’ orders more efficiently.
“Working alongside Vulcan, we can pick and stow with greater ease,” says Kari Freitas Hardy, a front-line employee at GEG1, a fulfillment center in Spokane, Washington.
“It’s great to see how many of my co-workers have gained new job skills and taken on more technical roles, like I did, once they started working closer with the technology at our sites.”
A softer touch, a smarter warehouse
At Amazon’s fulfillment centers, inventory is stored in fabric-covered pods divided into small, crowded compartments—each about a foot wide and packed with multiple items.
For robots, navigating that tight space without damaging goods has been a near-impossible task. However, with Vulcan, that’s changed.
The robot uses force sensors and adaptive paddles to gently push items aside and slide new ones into tight spaces without damage. A suction arm with a camera helps it pick the right object—and only the right one—reducing errors.
Vulcan even learns from its own failures. (Credit: Amazon)
It can handle about 75 percent of items at human-like speed and knows when to call in a human for backup, making Amazon’s warehouses smarter and more collaborative, where humans and robots each play to their strengths.
At the facilities, the robot has already taken up physically demanding tasks, like reaching the top and bottom rows of storage pods—jobs that usually require employees to bend down or climb ladders. By handling these awkward zones, the robot reduces strain and boosts efficiency, freeing workers to operate in more ergonomic comfort.
“Vulcan works alongside our employees, and the combination is better than either on their own,” Parness said in a release.
Revolutionizing the warehouse floor
The robot is part of Amazon’s long-running push to blend robotics with human labor.
Over the past 12 years, Amazon has deployed more than 750,000 robots across its fulfillment centers, creating new job roles—from robotics floor monitors to maintenance engineers—and offering upskilling programs like Career Choice to help employees move into tech-driven careers.
Its growing robotic workforce already includes machines like Sparrow, Cardinal, and Robin, which handle individual products, while heavy lifters like Proteus, Titan, and Hercules move entire carts of goods through the warehouse.
Vulcan itself was built to tackle inefficiency and the strain of manual high-reach picking. That mission required years of work across hardware, AI, and machine learning—from developing tactile sensors and adaptive gripping tools to training the robot on thousands of real-world items, not just in simulations.
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Vulcan uses stereo vision to find space in crowded bins and physical AI to distinguish between everything from socks to tubes of toothpaste—learning from trial and error just like a child.
“It’s a technology that seemed impossible just three years ago,” says Parness, “but is now set to transform our operations.”
Amazon plans to scale Vulcan across sites in Europe and the U.S. over the next few years. By reducing physical strain on employees and speeding up the fulfillment process, the company hopes Vulcan’s sense of touch will help it deliver more, faster, and with less wear and tear on its workforce.
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