Warehouse Robots At Your Service
Amazon’s Proteus
As You Wish: Amazon’s New Warehouse Robot Follows Natural Language Commands Amazon’s next-generation autonomous Proteus robot acts on natural language commands to take on more tasks across its operations. The new technology builds on the original autonomous robot and expands its ability to assist employees with their daily tasks. Using advances in arti cial intelligence, the new Proteus is designed to understand natural language. Employees will now be able to direct Proteus in the same way they would communicate with a colleague— using plain, conversational language, with no technical commands and no programming interface. The new Proteus is currently being piloted in Amazon’s labs, with deployment in Europe planned for the rst half of 2027. Like its predecessor, the new Proteus
carts and covering long distances—so employees can focus on higher-skilled work like managing inventory ow and ensuring quality control. The original Proteus operates in dock areas within ful llment centers, navigating safely around people and transporting carts that can weigh around 900 pounds. It’s currently deployed at 25 ful llment centers in the United States. The next generation of Proteus is designed to go beyond the loading dock. The new system can work anywhere items need to be moved. This includes transporting containers as they arrive at a site, transferring them between workstations, and assisting employees across Amazon’s ful llment centers and delivery sites. Only 7.8 inches tall, the Proteus warehouse robot chirps when there’s something in front of it to alert workers it has seen them and will avoid them. It interacts autonomously with charging docks throughout the warehouse, charging every two hours and taking about 15 minutes to recharge.
is designed to take on physically demanding tasks—moving heavy
156 Inbound Logistics • July 2026
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