Amazon expects to have more than twice as many robotic arms by year’s end, adding to a fleet of more than a million warehouse robots, according to Jeremy Hsu at Ars Technica. Amazon says the robots spare workers the most punishing tasks, and its newest arm, Vulcan, uses touch sensors to work the top and bottom rows of storage pods that people would otherwise need a ladder or bend down to reach. A 2025 study in the ILR Review found Amazon’s robot-equipped warehouses had 40% fewer severe injuries than older sites but 77% more strain injuries, and coauthor Brad Greenwood of George Mason University said the faster pace the robots set is driving them. Amazon has called reports linking its robots to higher injury rates outdated, and it says its recordable injury rate has dropped 43% since 2019.
