By Sean McLain

Artificial intelligence that makes humans more efficient and robots that make them less necessary: That's the future Amazon.com is building in its e-commerce fulfillment business.

The retail giant unveiled a trio of new technologies Wednesday that it is testing or preparing to deploy in its warehouses and delivery vans. They include a robot arm called Blue Jay, designed to sort packages; an artificial-intelligence agent called Eluna, intended to help human managers deploy workers and avoid bottlenecks; and augmented-reality glasses to be worn by delivery drivers in the field.

The announcements are the latest in a yearslong effort by Amazon to automate more warehouse tasks, an effort that began with the company's $775 million acquisition of Kiva Systems in 2012. Around three-quarters of Amazon's deliveries are in some way assisted by robots, the company has said.

Chief Executive Andy Jassy is pushing for Amazon to embrace AI tools even more than it already has and has said he expected the result to be a diminished need for white-collar workers. Wednesday's announcement shows how that same trend might play out on the warehouse floor. The average number of workers in Amazon facilities fell to around 670 in 2024, the lowest in 16 years, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis.

Analysts expect Amazon to see billions of dollars in cost savings every year as it automates more of the logistics process, both through increased efficiency and reduced need for humans. The company is projected to have nearly 40 delivery fulfillment centers equipped with robots by the end of next year, which Morgan Stanley estimated would result in up to $4 billion in cost savings.

Blue Jay was developed in a little more than year, versus three years for previous models, because of the ability to use generative AI to make virtual prototypes, said Tye Brady, chief technologist for Amazon Robotics, at the company's Delivering the Future conference in San Francisco on Wednesday.

"Many years of hard work are now being supercharged by the latest advances in AI," Brady said.

Amazon said it is trying out the Blue Jay robots at a facility in South Carolina, with the goal of deploying them in a network of same-day delivery centers that will enable cheaper and faster package deliveries.

Robots like Blue Jay that can function in tight spaces also allow Amazon to build new, smaller warehouses in urban areas, where it couldn't operate previously because it couldn't purchase enough warehouse space, Brady said.

Eluna is scheduled for a test run at a Tennessee warehouse, where the company says managers will be able to ask it questions such as: "Where should we shift people to avoid a bottleneck?"

An early version of Amazon's warehouse of the future is already at work.

At the company's cutting-edge facility in Shreveport, La., robot arms sort packages into carts which are then carried to trucks by machines resembling large robot vacuums. Other robots assist humans by grabbing out-of-reach items.

Brady said the Shreveport facility, which is the model for Amazon's ambitions, contains 10 times as many robots as a typical warehouse, allowing packages to move through 25% faster. "We plan to pass on that low cost to customers, he said.

Amazon says its goal is to improve safety and offload mundane tasks to AI and robots. "We want to eliminate every repetitive, menial task out there," Brady said. The company is also investing in training current workers, offering apprenticeships designed to teach them to manage these robots.

Amazon has also tested humanoid robots called Digit, which can shift items around a warehouse, at a facility outside Boston.

For the company's fleet of delivery drivers, Amazon showed off a pair of AI-powered AR glasses that can identify the correct packages to deliver, provide turn-by-turn directions to drop-off locations and even flag the presence of dogs. Many of these functions are currently handled by smartphones carried by the drivers. Amazon said it tested early versions of the device with hundreds of drivers, but didn't say if it planned to roll the technology out for broader use.

The number of packages each driver carries has nearly doubled over the past five years, managers of Amazon last-mile delivery fleets say. Delays in locating the correct drop-off location is a common way that drivers fall behind, the managers say.

Write to Sean McLain at sean.mclain@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 22, 2025 19:00 ET (23:00 GMT)

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