PREVIEW

Amazon has unveiled a robot capable not only of seeing but also of feeling the world around it. Known as Vulcan, this new robot introduces a sense of touch into the company's sprawling fulfilment centres allowing it to handle items with a finesse that conventional machines previously lacked. Unveiled at Amazon's Delivering the Future event in Dortmund, Germany, Vulcan uses force sensors to give it tactile awareness. “Vulcan represents a fundamental leap forward in robotics,” says Aaron Parness, director of applied science at Amazon. “It's not just seeing the world—it's feeling it. That enables capabilities that were simply impossible until now.” Unlike many traditional industrial robots—described by Parness as “numb and dumb”—which tend to either stop or bulldoze through unexpected contact Vulcan understands when it's made contact with an object and can adjust its grip accordingly. The firm say Vulcan is a game-changer in warehouse environments, where millions of products are stored in tightly packed compartments. Crucially, when Vulcan encounters an object it can't confidently move, it doesn't simply fail—instead, it calls in a human colleague to complete the task creating what Amazon describes as a “human-robot collaboration.”