Amazon is providing warehouse workers a utility belt that fights off robots

Amazon has more than 100,000 robots in the warehouses, and of course it must ensure that the machines play well with human staff. The company's latest solution to keeping robo-human relationships ticking smoothly is what it's called "Robotic Tech Vest" – a small package that warehouse workers can carry to make them visible to nearby machines.

As reported by TechCrunch Robotic Tech Vest (really more of a belt-and-suspenders combination, judge by the image above) is a nice upgrade to existing security systems.

Usually, Amazon's robots empty the sleeves of goods around in an interconnected area where they cannot run into employees. If a robot breaks down or releases some elements that a human being has to enter the area to put things right. "Previously, partners would mark the grid of cells where they would work to enable the robotic traffic planner to route that region," Amazon's VP of Robotics, Brad Porter, told TechCrunch . "What the West does to the robots is to discover the man from afar and update his travel plan with smart updates without having to commit to explicitly marking those zones."

Photo by Stephen Brashear / Getty Images

Robotic Tech Vest (or RTV) is basically the same as high-vis jacket then: it makes the user more visible. Probably the new system is also more flexible than previous security measures. Employees can walk into the robot's cabinet when they need, rather than having to mark a safe zone in advance. Amazon says RTV has been introduced to more than 25 locations over the past year, claiming it has been a "great success."

Interestingly, however, the Amazon's introduction of RTV goes contrary to what some experts believed the future of industrial robots would be. For many years, companies have developed so-called cobots or "colloborative robots" – machines with built-in cameras that detect nearby people and adjust the movements accordingly, no RTVs are needed.

What Amazon's deployment of this bit kit suggests is that development robots are not necessarily the most cost-effective approach to automation. Instead, it seems easier to let robots have their own work space where people just don't go. In other words: The stock of the future will be built around robots, not humans.