Amazon will ship your holiday gifts with the help of a robot army
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Just in time for Cyber Monday, Amazon's biggest day of online shopping, the company has deployed more than 15,000 robots to help ship holiday gifts.
The wheeled robots will move across the aisles in 10 Amazon warehouses, delivering stacks of products to Amazon's human employees, who then process the orders. The robots are made by Kiva Systems, a company which Amazon purchased in 2012 for a cool $775 million.
Dave Clark, Amazon's senior vice president of operations, told Time that the robots are "not about eliminating jobs," but are instead about increasing the company's efficiency and relieving humans of the more stressful aspects of Amazon deliveries. Amazon will employ roughly 80,000 temporary workers this holiday season.
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Check out the robots in action at Amazon's Tracy, California, warehouse in the video below, courtesy of Time. --Meghan DeMaria
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Meghan DeMaria is a staff writer at TheWeek.com. She has previously worked for USA Today and Marie Claire.
