Amazon, frontier technology was born in the Innovation Lab in Vercelli

In Vercelli, Piedmont, inside a department store where 600 employees work, Amazon has inaugurated a new space dedicated to the Innovation Laba laboratory with a test area of ​​approximately 6 thousand m2 where they are designed and developed the technologies that the e-commerce giant uses to make its shipments more efficient, safer and faster.

Amazon has so far opened only three Innovation Labs worldwide. Two are in the United States: one in Seattle, the city where Jeff Bezos founded the company in 1994, and the other in Boston, home to a tech hub where more than two thousand employees work.

The Innovation Lab of Vercelli, therefore, it is the only one outside the USA.

“We started from a corner of a 100 thousand m2 warehouse” he says Stefano La Rovere, the director of the Lab who holds the role of Director Global Robotics, Mechatronics & Sustainable Packaging at Amazon. “The team was made up of only one person: myself” adds La Rovere smiling, explaining that in the last five years the team has obviously expanded up to include, today, “one hundred engineers”.

“But the Lab is a space open to everyone – says La Rovere – anyone in the company can experiment with new technologies here”. And he gives the example of Monitrona small orange sensor developed by AWS (Amazon Web Services) stuck on a conveyor belt. For the Seattle company it is a precious device: it collects data on the robots used in the warehouses and sends it to the “cloud”, where artificial intelligence continuously analyzes it to intercept any anomalies.

“This way engineers are no longer forced to continuously monitor machinery in the field, a dashboard is enough” he explains Alessandra Antonelli, Country manager for Italy of AWS. The little Monitron can now be found in more than 129 warehouses. And it apparently allowed Amazon to save 22.5 million euros in 2023 alone.

La Rovere and Antonelli, together with Amazon’s vice president of International Operations, Stefano Peregowere the Italian protagonists of the first event “Delivering The Future” that the Seattle company organized in Europe, on the occasion of the ribbon cutting of the Innovation Lab in Piedmont, where Amazon has around 3,700 permanent employees.

Over the past five years, Amazon has invested 700 million euros in the technology that supports its warehouses in Europe. An expense that led to the development and use of at least 1000 technological devices.

The e-commerce giant has communicated that in the last decade the introduction of new technologies, in particular robots, has led to 50 thousand hires.

This is a significant fact, as it demonstrates that the role of human beings is still central. And the day when they will be replaced by robots is still far away.

Even if Amazon itself, a few months ago, showed humanoids with movements similar to those of real employees for the first time.

They are called Digit, were developed by the startup Agility Robotics and represent “an interesting experiment”. “They were created to eliminate the most repetitive tasks, not to replace humans,” he told us Scott Dresservice president of Amazon Robotics, last year Delivering The Future which took place last October in Seattle, when the company founded by Bezos announced the imminent testing of drone deliveries in Italy.

In Vercelli there was no “wow” effect. This is because basically Amazon doesn’t need science fiction but of machines that work well. And they work simply.

One of the aims of the Innovation Lab, explained La Rovere, is precisely that of allow employee training who will interact with the robots. In short, we are talking about the place where Amazon’s frontier technology meets human needs.

“You see that machine over there,” says La Rovere, indicating a conveyor belt on which packages are flowing. “Is called Universal Robotic Labeller and it’s the first time we’ve revealed it to the world” he adds proudly. “But you are still in the alpha phase” specifies La Rovere, implying that she is still far from being employed in warehouses. When she’s ready, it could make a huge difference.

URL is in fact the first Amazon robot capable of labeling even irregular parcels. An operation that seems trivial but which, even today, still requires human intervention. In the future, the flesh-and-blood employee will no longer be needed. A robotic arm will take the freshly printed label and stick it on each package.

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“Thanks to this system – adds La Rovere – we were finally able to apply much smaller labels than those we normally use. URL will allow us to associate labels directly with the boxes of smaller products, which will therefore not need additional wrapping to be delivered.”

Save on packaging it’s not just about moneyper Amazon.

Fewer boxes means less space and therefore more efficient shipping. Customers also gain – the recycling operation is less demanding – and of course the environment. On this front, Amazon intends to accelerate, even if it is already starting from a good result: in the last 5 years, in the world, 700 million products with their original packaging, without having to resort to further packaging. Furthermore, since 2015, Amazon has managed to avoid 2 million tons of unnecessary packaging.

If it succeeded, it is also thanks to the technologies developed by its Innovation Labs.

In Vercelli, for example, a machine was already shown in operation in warehouses which is used to package less bulky products in an eco-friendly way. We have seen how a pair of socks, for example, are slipped between two sheets of paper that are resistant to tearing and rain.

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Pressing a button activates a press that seals the ends of the two sheets and above all uses the exact amount of paper to avoid waste. Of course, he does the calculations artificial intelligence.

“We will open part of the Lab to the public – said La Rovere – we want to involve schools and universities”. It could be a way to attract talent. We will always need more, after all. “Every day we move around 750 thousand robotic systems” said Stefano Perego.