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Amazon shows off the robots handling your holiday orders
Amazon gets a lot of orders during the holidays -- enough that shipping companies sometimes buckle under the load. How's it supposed to cope this year? With robots, apparently. The online shopping giant has revealed that its newest wave of US fulfillment centers make heavy use of automatons to ship your order on time. Kiva robots (the little machines you see above) are around to shuttle smaller goods around the warehouse, while Robo-Stow arms move the larger volumes. There are also shiny new vision-based systems that help workers unload a trailer's worth of stock in 30 minutes, rather than hours. While humans will still play an important role (Amazon will need 80,000 of them this season), they'll hopefully have an easier time dealing with the crushing demand.
Amazon touts 'millions' of new Prime members, 1,382 new robot workers as it pulls in $17 billion in revenue
Amazon's known for not offering many specific details about its device sales or customers in its earnings reports, and this quarter's is no exception. The company did note, however, that it added "millions" of Prime users during the quarter, a number that's no doubt only set to grow further now that it's finally raised its free shipping threshold to $35. Beyond that, the company announced that its net sales increased 24% year-over-year to 17.09 billion, but it's still not making a profit, reporting a net loss of $41 million for the quarter. In one detail you don't often see in an earnings report, Amazon also boasted that it's deployed 1,382 Kiva robots in three of its fulfillment centers during the quarter (it bought the company last year), adding another degree of automation to its shipping process. That pales in comparison to the number of new human employees its brought on, though -- Amazon says it has begun hiring and training 70,000 new employees to work in those centers in advance of the holiday season. You can find the rest of the company's numbers at the source link below.
Richard Garriott discusses ongoing plans for Portalarium
As much as some may poke fun at Facebook and other social media based games, those games have an enormous market share that's still growing. Let's face it: These games attract not only all manner of gamers but also the most casual of non-gaming users, such as your Great-Aunt Martha or partners who generally dislike video games. With that in mind, Edge caught up with Richard Garriott at DICE Summit recently to catch up on how things are progressing with his foray into the social gaming world: Portalarium. While we knew about Portalarium's initial offerings such as the card game, it appears that the company has much bigger plans in store. Garriott discusses the success of many of the titles in the social gaming space and how that relates to his own personal world-building experiences with Ultima Online. Further, he notes that Portalarium's current main title is "not a game about farming... operating a shop... [or] managing your pets." There is also some discussion of making in-game purchases tie to microlending sites like Kiva to benefit projects in other countries, which is certainly worth reading as well. If you're curious about where Portalarium is going or interested in reading some ideas from an industry vet, then pop over to Edge and check out the full interview with Garriott.
Zappos hires robots to take over inventory floor
Just think -- Zappos has been shipping out shoes .9284 minutes after you order them for years with mere humans running the show. Now, your new kicks will likely be at your doorstep moments after you think of ordering them. Said e-tailer has just completed implementation of Kiva Systems' Mobile Fulfillment System, which will see "a fleet of Kiva's mobile robotic drive units and inventory storage pods" hit the company's Shepherdsville, Kentucky facility. The move is being made to keep its distribution system in tip-top shape even with the addition of new products outside of just footwear, and unless some of those mechs grow a mind of their own, we'd say things should pan out just fine.[Via CNET]
