The big difference between the two robots is that Pegasus mounts a mini-conveyor belt on top of the puck-like drive. Like Hercules, the drive is fully sensored and operates safely around people, other robots, and obstructions. The robot is built on a Hercules drive and uses a structured field to navigate the sortation center. In 2018, Amazon unveiled Pegasus, a drive used to take finished parcels from employees and sort them by zip code or delivery route within the fulfillment center. “There’s just so many of them that the rest of the swarm can replan and reroute.
“If ten or even one hundred drives need to recharge their batteries or stop to run diagnostics, that’s OK,” Brady said. Hercules drives operate in parallel - even when some need to pause their operations. This enables it to identify the location of humans and robots beyond the range of its sensors, so it can plan a route that steers clear of them.
Hercules also communicates with other robots and humans with wearable Wi-Fi transmitters called Tech Vests. Hercules communicates with other robots and with humans wearing Wi-Fi transmitters called Tech Vests, like the one seen here. The drive is also programmed to respond safely if the electricity goes out or the Wi-Fi crashes. The robot uses these images to make safe decisions quickly if an issue arises. Hercules mounts a forward-facing 3D camera that identifies people, pods, other robots, and obstructions. By reading the markers with its downward facing camera, it can find its position and the location of any pod. Hercules itself is a fourth-generation drive designed to navigate structured fields, floors that contain a grid of encoded markers. Better yet, they will not charge you $80 to park there as well!” “The same thing happens with clustered pods, and our algorithms solve it all the time using a team of robots. “That’s when your car is boxed in by 10 other cars and you want to get it out efficiently,” he said. However, clustering sometimes creates what Brady, who works in Boston, calls a Fenway Park parking puzzle.
Scientists in the Boston area work on technology related to Amazon Web Services, Alexa, robotics, and quantum computing. The Boston region is an important research hub for Amazon, with offices in the city itself as well as in nearby Cambridge and North Reading. If an order involves more than one item, the centralized planner schedules several drives, each carrying one or more products, to arrive one after the other, so the associate can more easily assemble the order. Let me see if I can find you a new route.’”Īfter an order comes in, the first in motion is Hercules, which fetches goods from inventory so employees can pack and label them for shipping. If a drive sees that a path is blocked, for example, the planner says, ‘That’s OK. “The drives have enough smarts to move safely around humans, communicate with nearby robots so they do not collide, and report any problems like spills or obstructions back to the controller.
“Once the centralized planner creates this schedule, it assigns tasks and routes to the drives,” Brady explained. When the right match is found, that information is sent to a specific fulfillment center, where centralized planning software begins to orchestrate the safe, efficient movement of those robot drives to help meet the delivery date. Algorithms gauge both product availability and the ability to meet delivery windows. The process begins when an order arrives. Tye Brady, Amazon Robotics’ chief technologist, likens it to an air traffic control system: The flight controller provides the route and departure/arrival times, but the pilot takes off, flies, and lands the jet using their best judgment. Three of Amazon’s leading roboticists - Sidd Srinivasa, Tye Brady, and Philipp Michel - discuss the challenges of building robotic systems that interact with human beings in real-world settings.