Proteus upgrade lets workers boss around Amazon's warehouse robots

Amazon showed off a souped up version of its Proteus warehouse robot in London on June 4. The big change is that warehouse workers can just talk to it.

The updated machine can roam entire fulfillment centers. Workers tell it what to do in plain English or type the instructions. The robot then picks its own route, decides what’s urgent, and handles the timing. There’s no programming or code required.

“You tell it what needs to be done,” Scott Dresser, VP of Amazon Robotics, said at the event. “It figures out the priority, the route, the timing. It becomes your assistant for material movement.”

The first Proteus rolled out to 25 US fulfillment centers, but only in dock zones where it hauls carts up to 400 kilograms. This version can move containers from arrival all the way to individual workstations and between delivery stations. Amazon’s running lab tests now. European sites will get the upgraded robot in the first half of 2027.

Amazon dumps €10 billion into European warehouses

Amazon plans to spend over €10 billion across the next few years upgrading and expanding its European fulfillment network. That package also includes 25,000 new warehouse jobs across the region, according to the company’s announcement.

Two other robots are scaling up alongside Proteus. Vulcan, which Amazon calls its first touch sensing robot, started in Spokane, Washington, and moved to the Hamburg warehouse in Germany.

STARK lifts and places loaded totes. It debuted in Barcelona and will be available in 15 European sites by 2027. STARK came from an operations employee who pitched a way to cut down repetitive heavy lifting.

“Customer expectations aren’t slowing down, and neither are we,” Armin Cossmann, Amazon’s VP of operations for Europe, said.

Amazon has deployed over 1 million robots

Amazon is running more than one million robots across its global operations. The company says automation has led to hundreds of thousands of hires since robots began appearing, plus new roles in maintenance, reliability, and engineering.

However, Amazon cut close to 30,000 positions over the past year across retail, AWS, Prime Video, and other divisions, according to Engadget.

The company’s safety record isn’t great either. A 2024 Strategic Organizing Center report found that Amazon employed 39% of US warehouse workers but logged 56% of serious injuries.

Amazon says the new Proteus takes over physically brutal work so people can shift to inventory management and quality control.

The company’s European pilot timeline has the first real-world Proteus test scheduled for early 2027. However, there’s no official announcement yet on US deployment for the upgraded robot.

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