At its Delivering the Future event in London this month, Amazon introduced the latest version of its Proteus autonomous robot for helping its warehouse employees.

Workers will be able to direct Proteus in the same way they’d communicate with a colleague, using plain, conversational language, with no technical commands and no programming interface. An employee tells it what needs to be done, and the robot takes care of the rest.

Like its predecessor, this Proteus is designed to take on physically demanding tasks – moving heavy carts and covering long distances – so employees can focus on higher-skilled work such as managing inventory flow and ensuring quality control.

These technologies are part of Amazon’s plans to invest over €10bn over the next few years to expand and modernise its fulfilment operations in Europe. This also includes the expansion of Vulcan, Amazon’s first robot with a sense of touch.

As part of this investment, Amazon (www.amazon.com) plans to grow its European fulfilment centre workforce by 25,000 in the coming years, creating jobs across the region.

The original Proteus (www.aboutamazon.com/stories/amazon-robotics-autonomous-robot-proteus-warehouse-packages) operates in dock areas within fulfilment centres, navigating safely around people and transporting heavy carts that can weigh close to 400kg, work that requires employees to push carts, lift heavy items and cover long distances during a shift. It is deployed at 25 fulfilment centres in the USA.

The new Proteus is designed to go further. Rather than operating only in dock areas, the system can work anywhere items need to be moved. This includes transporting containers as they arrive at a site, transferring them between workstations, and assisting employees across Amazon’s fulfilment centres and delivery sites.

There is also a shift in how employees interact with it. Using advances in AI, the Proteus is designed to understand natural language. That means employees can assign it tasks the way they’d communicate with a colleague.

“You tell it what needs to be done,” said Scott Dresser, vice president of Amazon Robotics. “It figures out the priority, the route, the timing. It becomes your assistant for material movement.”

The system is designed to handle the heavy lifting and help support site safety. It’s currently being piloted in Amazon’s labs, with deployment in Europe planned for the first half of 2027.