Amazon Vulcan

Amazon's first warehouse picking robot with a sense of touch.

Vulcan is the warehouse robot Amazon unveiled in Dortmund, Germany, in May 2025, which the company describes as its first robot with a sense of “touch.” Its end effector uses force-feedback sensors to detect when it makes contact with an object and how much force to apply, letting it push other items aside inside a tightly packed storage bin to place or retrieve goods. It has two kinds of end effectors: one resembling a flat blade with a small built-in conveyor belt, used for stowing items, and a camera-equipped suction-cup arm, used for picking. It can handle around 75% of the items in a warehouse, and is used mainly for the highest and lowest shelves that human workers struggle to reach, and is already in use at Amazon warehouses in Spokane, Washington, and Hamburg, Germany.

ExampleVulcan uses its blade-like end effector to push items in a bin to one side, clearing space to stow new inventory.

Also called

Vulcan

Related

Amazon Robotics · Tactile Sensor · Six-Axis Force/Torque Sensor · Vacuum Suction Cup · Order Picking · Contact-rich Manipulation

Sources

About Amazon：Introducing Vulcan, Amazon's first robot with a sense of touch
Amazon Science：How Amazon's Vulcan robots use touch to plan and execute motions

As of

2025-05