Metro meets Tye Brady, Amazon’s Chief Technologist for Robotics, to talk AI, humanoid armies and the machines quietly reshaping how fast – and how safely – our orders reach the doorstep...
Tye Brady’s eyes gleam with the enthusiasm of a man who has spent three decades in his dream job. When Metro meets Brady, he is about to step on stage at the Delivering The Future conference in Tokyo to unveil Amazon’s millionth robot – a four-wheeled buggy called Hercules, part of an immense fleet the firm has built since acquiring robotics firm Kiva in 2012.
It makes Amazon’s fleet of industrial robots the world’s largest and Brady, who has driven its growth, its human overlord.
The Kiva takeover was a pivotal moment, bringing with it a full-scale push into automation, along with the introduction of a ‘goods-to-person’ system that Brady says ‘revolutionised’ fulfillment centres.
In 2012, Amazon workers had to walk 10 miles a day collecting goods from all parts of the warehouse and bringing them back to their stations. Now, in 2025, goods come to them. ‘All they have to do is reach out at waist height and grab the item. We call it the magic hand,’ says Brady. ‘It really changed the game for us.’
Now, the latest AI-powered ‘automated floors’ pack 40% more goods into the same space, since robots don’t need human-sized aisles. ‘It’s a really big deal,’ says Brady. ‘We can store more items closer to customers and deliver faster.’
Lightning fast deliveries, lower costs and the ‘world’s largest selection of goods’ are what customers demand — and all central to Brady’s mission.
‘When we started this process years ago, people were blown away by two-day delivery,’ he says. ‘Now we have one day delivery in most places and in some urban cities less than two hours.’
And while many of us are squeamish about automation and AI, Brady points out none of the convenience we desire would be possible without it. You want your Amazon package on your doorstep the same day you order it? You’d better embrace the march of technology.
‘The work the robotics team has done, particularly with AI, has led to ever faster speeds,’ says Brady. ‘It’s quite revolutionary.’
The latest development driving that speed is the newly launched Deep Fleet, an AI ‘air-traffic control’ system that choreographs the movement of Amazon’s million robots across the globe, shaving 10% off travel time. ‘You might not think 10% is much,’ Brady says, ‘but at Amazon scale, it’s a really big deal.’
A safer workplace
Brady insists robots make work safer as well as faster, taking on tasks most likely to cause injury. ‘Safety is our prime directive,’ he says, adding Amazon’s injury rates have fallen by 30% globally in five years with the introduction of robotics.
‘I will unabashedly say that I want to eliminate all the menial, the mundane, the dangerous and the repetitive. So if I can have a robot repeatedly pick up that 50lb box and move it, that frees up the employee to do other things that robots can’t do.’
What about those sci-fi fears of the humanoid robot army takeover?
Brady laughs. ‘A humanoid robot isn’t always the goal,’ he says. ‘Their stability is not always optimal.
‘I never start with form first. I start with the challenge, then design the best robot for the job – whatever shape that takes.’
That is not to rule out the humanoid: amid the wheeled robots like Hercules that move goods around, Amazon deploys robots like Digit, a dexterous biped humanoid that works alongside humans packing goods, and Vulcan, a machine with long arms that can reach the highest and lowest shelves and sensitive grippers that ‘feel’, allowing it to handle even delicate objects.
‘Every robot has a specific function that makes it most efficient,’ Brady says.
So what does the ideal robot look like? ‘R2D2,’ Brady says with a laugh. ‘R2D2 inspired my whole career. I love it – always right there in the X-Wing, helping the Jedi be more Jedi.
‘Robots should extend human – or Jedi – capabilities to achieve more.’
This ethos underpins Brady’s dream: a future where humans are supported, not superseded, by robots.
‘Every robot we build isn’t replacing a person – it’s designed to take away the things people shouldn’t have to do and allow our human workers to focus on more complex and rewarding tasks.’
Machines should improve our lives, he says. ‘We don’t complain about our robot vacuum cleaner, lawnmower or pool cleaner taking away work. Have at it. And imagine a world with robot carers enable the sick to stay at home with their family longer. It’s about taking on the load that allows us to be more human. To connect and spend more time with our families.’
Humans vs robots? Not quite
Behind the whirring efficiency, though, there’s an uneasier question: what happens to the humans?
Critics fear automation could wipe out jobs, yet the World Economic Forum predicts AI will create far more than it destroys – a net gain of 78 million globally, with new roles in AI, robotics maintenance, data science, and logistics planning — jobs that didn’t exist 20 years ago.
Brady agrees. ‘It’s not robots versus humans,’ he says. ‘It’s robots with humans — we’ve created thousands of new roles and many of them exist because of robotics.
‘We build collaborative robots. People and machines work better together when technology is easy to use.’
So, for now, no robot uprising at Amazon?
Brady laughs wryly at the notion. He is adamant that full automation – Amazon warehouses and deliveries run without humans – is not the goal. It is riskier, more expensive and less effective, he says.
‘Humans bring flexibility, creativity and common sense that robots don’t,’ he says. ‘I truly believe that the role of machines is to augment and amplify human potential. It is why I got into this game.
‘What I want people to understand is this: Robots are here to make your life easier, your packages arrive faster and your experience better.
‘They are not here to take over.’
AMAZON’S MILLIONTH ROBOT – AND BEYOND
The millionth robot
Amazon’s millionth robot marks a new phase in what it calls ‘humans and robots working in harmony’.
This latest recruit, Hercules, joins thousands of identical blue robots at the Chiba fulfilment centre near Tokyo – billed as Amazon’s most futuristic yet.
On the vast automation floor, Hercules lifts and carries tall shelves of goods to human packers.
A 3D camera allows it to navigate, detect humans, pods and other robots while guided both by its own internal intelligence and by Deep Fleet AI.
Hercules can identify the location of humans who wear Wi-Fi transmitters called Tech Vests so it can plan a route that steers clear of them.
The result? A silent, choreographed dance of machines moving in perfect sync to speed up deliveries.
MSS1: Amazon’s sorting superpower
Meet MSS1 – the world’s first multi-satellite sorting system that is transforming multi-item orders by synching their movement across the fulfilment centre using a dizzying network of conveyer belts powered by AI. Deep Fleet AI locates the goods, Hercules fetches them, and MSS1 races them through a web of tubes so everything lands at the same packing station at once.
The finale? An intelligent packaging system that suggests the optimal box to fit the items with minimal wasted space. ‘When we get multiple items into one box and to you quicker with fewer miles on the road, that’s a win for the customer and the planet,’ says Brady.
The intelligent packer
No more oversized boxes for tiny items. Amazon is shifting from cardboard boxes and envelopes to delivering products in lighter, more flexible and easily recyclable paper bags, when it’s safe to do so.
The new automated packaging machine introduced in Chiba, Japan, uses materials more resourcefully. Sensors detect the size of an item and then cuts paper packaging to fit, automatically applying a delivery label to the paper bag.
Compared with cardboard boxes, more items packed in paper bags or envelopes can fit into delivery trucks, meaning more efficient deliveries too. Less waste, less filler, faster deliveries.
Blue Jay
Introduced this week at Amazon’s Designing The Future conference in San Francisco, Blue Jay is a multi-armed robot that acts like an extra set of hands, helping employees with tasks that involve reaching and lifting. It’s a next-generation robotics system that coordinates multiple robotic arms to perform many tasks at once, uniting what used to be three separate robotic stations into one streamlined workspace that can pick, stow, and consolidate in a single place.
MORE: Score 1.5kg of retro Halloween sweets for under £12 with this scarily good saving
MORE: Customers say this Amazon tape makes your wrinkles disappear and it’s less than £7
MORE: Albania’s AI minister is ‘pregnant with 83 children’, says prime minister
