Robotics

Amazon’s Vulcan robot boasts sense of touch

Photo courtesy of Amazon

May 7, 2025

Amazon has debuted Vulcan, the company's first robot featuring a sense of touch.

The robot aims to make Amazon workers' jobs easier and safer while processing orders, according to a news release.

When industrial robots have an unexpected contact they are typically programmed to an emergency stop or to move forward through the contact and don't know they have hit something as the robot cannot sense the object.

Vulcan can sense touch, according to Aaron Parness, Amazon director, applied science.

"Vulcan represents a fundamental leap forward in robotics," Parness said in the release. "It's not just seeing the world, it's feeling it, enabling capabilities that were impossible for Amazon robots until now."

"Working alongside Vulcan, we can pick and stow with greater ease," Kari Freitas Hardy, a front-line employee at GEG1, a fulfillment center in Spokane, Washington, said in the release. "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."

Vulcan is not Amazon's first robot that can pick things up, however, as Amazon robots, Sparrow, Cardinal and Robin systems use use computer vision and suction cups to move individual products or packages packed by human workers. The robots Proteus, Titan and Hercules lift and haul carts of goods around our fulfillment centers.

Vulcan features an "end of arm tooling" that resembles a ruler stuck onto a hair straightener, plus force feedback sensors that tell it how hard it's pushing or how firmly it's holding something, so it can stay below the point at which it risks doing damage.

For picking items from bins, Vulcan uses an arm that carries a camera and a suction cup. The camera looks at the compartment and picks out the item to be grabbed, along with the best spot to hold it by. While the suction cup grabs it, the camera watches to make sure it took the right thing and only the right thing, avoiding what our engineers call the risk of "co-extracting non-target items."

Vulcan can pick and stow approximately 75% of all various types of items Amazon stores at fulfillment centers, and at speeds comparable to front-line employees.

At fulfillment centers in Spokane, Washington, and Hamburg, Germany, Vulcan is focused on picking and stowing inventory in the top rows of those inventory pods.

"Vulcan works alongside our employees, and the combination is better than either on their own," Parness added in the release.