Every prediction of the future includes highly developed technologies beyond our imagination.

50 years ago, no one believed that Robots would become irreplaceable in certain fields of commerce, especially in e-commerce, where they have been used to manage warehouses ever since Amazon started doing it.

Today, many companies want that for themselves but Amazon stopped selling them their robots, utilizing their full potential for themselves. The question remains: are robots taking over the e-commerce warehouses? Let’s see what the facts state.

How it all started

Back in 2003, a person named Mick Mountz developed robots which were going to fulfill his material-handling needs inside of a warehouse. These robots have been adjusted for a decade, and in 2013, the company was purchased by Amazon and renamed into Amazon Robotics. Today, Amazon uses over 20,000 of these robots to handle its 10 warehouses and products with care and caution. Robots haven’t failed once and are doing their job flawlessly. On top of that, they are still being researched and upgraded as time goes by and new technologies are discovered daily. Many companies use these robots for their warehouses. Some names are Office Depot, The Gap, Gilt Group and many more.

The competition continued

Seeing how great Amazon is doing, many companies wanted that for themselves. Entrepreneurs saw this as a great business opportunity and started creating startups which will soon bring in millions. In 2014, the famous startup known as Fetch Robotics came to be, and ever since it is among the world’s leading robotics manufacturing company. The robots were designed to perform all sorts of warehouse activities and work along humans without disturbing them. More and more companies started following this pattern, including Grey Orange, a startup from India which developed a Butler System for shelving and transporting goods around the warehouse. The entire warehouse system got taken care of by adding robots to the equation.

Implementation of robotics: complete

By the year 2016, most of the companies using warehouses actively implemented the robotic systems and added them to their workforce. Having robots handling your warehouses has many advantages, including fast and flawless transportation of goods, good handling and precise delivery and packaging. And the best part is – robots don’t require any special training or any sort of training at all. Simply program it to do your work for you. Your storage solutions lie in the robotics workforce.

What does this mean for the economy?

For business, this is only good news, however, for the economy of the world, not so much. Namely, as the robots enter the warehouse and start making their way into other sections of the business, people will lose their jobs and get replaced by these metallic creatures. As time goes by, robots become cheaper and cheaper, and more improved than the year before. Soon, we can see millions of people let off due to being replaced by robots. The use of robotics started off with production of goods and is now used actively for storing. The question is what is next? As long as the AI (Artificial Intelligence) is under control, we have nothing to fear… except maybe losing our job.

Robots have brought a new era and the business is flourishing. But the downside of it is the complete replacement of human workforce. Many will lose their jobs, and this issue should be severely dealt with in the future. All that remains is to see where this leads us, as for right now, robots are a cheap way of finishing your work with little to no effort.