For years, Amazon Prime Air has been working on drones that can deliver packages to customers, but now it’s also working on projects to help Amazon itself deal with the coronavirus outbreak.
Brad Porter, Amazon’s vice president of robotics, hinted at Prime Air’s role this week in a LinkedIn posting he wrote in response to the resignation of fellow VP Tim Bray.
Bray said he quit to protest the firings of whistleblowers sounding the alarm about COVID-19 risks. (The controversy is continuing, with nine U.S. senators asking Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos for more information about the firings.)
In his LinkedIn posting, Porter insisted that worker safety was a high priority at Amazon, and mentioned the efforts that his group has been making.
“We are working hard to develop and deploy additional processes and technology for a range of measures – from social distancing to contact tracing,” Porter wrote. “We are developing mobile ultraviolet sanitation. My Prime Air drones and robotics group has become an R&D lab for COVID innovation that I can’t wait to share with you. Today I reviewed a list of 72 new ideas for improvements we can make.”
We’re hearing that further information about those ideas will be coming out soon. In the meantime, Business Insider is reporting that one of Prime Air’s projects is using lab space and equipment to produce protective plastic face shields for its warehouse workers and local hospitals.
Citing emails and sources familiar with the effort, Business Insider said the Prime Air team has made thousands of face shields since going into production on April 16, and has the goal of turning out at least 1,000 units per day.
Some of those face shields are going to Whole Foods employees and Prime Now delivery workers, Business Insider reported.
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The project parallels an effort at Blue Origin, Bezos’ privately held space venture. The 3-D printers that are typically used for turning out rocket parts at Blue Origin’s production facility in Kent, Wash., are now also being employed to manufacture face shield visors.
Stratasys, an Israel-based 3-D printing supplier that organized the effort, reported this week that 100,000 face shield visors have been shipped so far, thanks to a coalition that includes Blue Origin and more than 100 other partners around the world (including Boeing).
“Humbled to be a part of this important initiative — and thankful to Team Blue and our entire industry for their contributions in the fight against COVID-19,” Blue Origin tweeted in reply to Stratasys’ status report.
Face shield production isn’t the only COVID-19 project on Amazon’s agenda. In an internal email from last month that Business Insider obtained, Porter talked about an online “Safety Innovation Portal” where employees can review and submit ideas for improving warehouse conditions during the pandemic.
The ideas relate to virus identification and sterilization, innovations that facilitate social distancing, ways to monitor and audit social distancing, or processes and technologies that reduce the need for multiple workers to touch the same object.
Today’s the deadline for submissions, Business Insider reported. This program is almost certainly what Porter was referring to when he said he was reviewing a list of 72 new ideas for improvements. So stay tuned: We’re hoping it won’t be long before we hear about some of the ideas that made the cut.
