Warehouse Robots At Your Service

Originally featured on Inbound Logistics

Offering increased integration options and AI enhancements, warehouse automation systems give workers an even greater assist.

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 artificial 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 first half of 2027.

Like its predecessor, the new Proteus is designed to take on physically demanding tasks—moving heavy carts and covering long distances—so employees can focus on higher-skilled work like managing inventory flow and ensuring quality control.

The original Proteus operates in dock areas within fulfillment centers, navigating safely around people and transporting carts that can weigh around 900 pounds. It’s currently deployed at 25 fulfillment 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 fulfillment 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.

The new Proteus is part of Amazon’s plans to invest more than $11 billion over the next few years to expand its fulfillment operations in Europe. Amazon plans to grow its European fulfillment center workforce by 25,000 in the coming years.

Ecommerce Fulfillment Provider Takes a Phased Approach to Cobots

ShipLab, a San Diego-area ecommerce fulfillment and third-party logistics provider, is deploying collaborative mobile robots at its Vista, California, facility. With an initial go-live planned for July 2026, the deployment follows a phased model designed to let ShipLab validate performance at each stage before expanding.

The partnership with Robust.AI, the AI-driven warehouse automation company behind the Carter cobot, begins with a pilot in which Carter will automate tote transport between fulfillment and packing stations.

Upon successful validation, the deployment will expand to a full fleet of Carter robots operating in a broader set of applications across their picking operation.

The phased approach, which Robust.AI structured as a “Crawl, Walk, Run” model, allows ShipLab to build operational confidence incrementally, with Robots-as-a-Service payments deferred at each phase until performance targets are confirmed by both companies.

“The Crawl, Walk, Run model Robust.AI brought to the table was the right approach for us,” says Jake Brenner, CEO of ShipLab. “We get to validate performance at each step, we only pay when the system delivers, and we don’t have to touch our existing operation to make it work.”

Robust.AI’s Carter is a collaborative mobile robot designed to work alongside warehouse associates without requiring changes to existing facility infrastructure. Carter’s software-defined functionality allows operations to expand from simple applications like point-to-point transport to more sophisticated ones like fully integrated order picking.

An Integrated Physical AI Solution Automates Inbound Logistics

Ambi Robotics and Pickle Robot Company integrated their specialized robotic systems to automate package movement across inbound logistics operations, enabling a continuous dock-to-warehouse workflow.

While warehouse automation has been highly siloed, the deployment provides a glimpse into what an interoperable Physical AI environment looks like in practice: one system unloading mixed freight from trailers and another building pallets downstream, each making independent decisions while contributing to a larger workflow.

It combines Pickle Robot’s trailer-unloading robots with Ambi Robotics’ AmbiStack multipurpose stacking solution, enabling a continuous and autonomous flow of packages from inbound trailers through receiving operations. Cases are unloaded from trailers by Pickle Robot’s systems, then inducted via conveyor into AmbiStack for identification, scanning, and stacking for downstream warehouse operations.

The end-to-end solution leverages existing warehouse infrastructure and systems, enabling customers to automate critical inbound processes without major facility redesigns. It demonstrates how warehouse operators can deploy specialized automation technologies from multiple providers to address labor-intensive workflows.

“As Physical AI transforms supply chains, interoperability will become increasingly important. We believe the future of warehouse automation will be built on collaboration across the industry, where specialized systems work together to solve complex operational challenges,” says Jim Liefer, CEO of Ambi Robotics. […]