Amazon is giving warehouse workers a tech vest that prevents them from colliding with robots at fulfillment centers as robot and human collaborations become increasingly commonplace, Tech Crunch reports.
The tech giant started the practice last year. Built-in sensors on the vest alert the robots to a worker's presence and either change direction or slow down, according Brad Porter, Amazon's vice president of robotics.
"In the past, associates would mark out the grid of the cells where they would be working in order to enable the robotic traffic planner to smartly route around that region," Porter told TechCrunch.
"What the vest allows the robots to do is detect the human from farther away and smartly update its travel plan to steer clear without the need for the associate to explicitly market out those zones."
Amazon has more than 100,000 robots in its warehouses as it continues to automate operations.
The report comes a month after the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration investigated an Amazon warehouse accident in New Jersey where a can of bear repellent was ruptured by an automated machine, sending 24 workers to the hospital for difficulty breathing and burning in their throat and eyes.
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