Smaller boxes and less waste: Amazon’s new labeling robot works miracles with packages

The giant Amazon unveiled, Thursday April 11, its brand new universal robotic labeler, a robot which improves the placement of labels on packages, which is not without advantages. Clubic was there.

Amazon, which opened its Operations Innovation Lab in Vercelli, located between Turin and Milan, to Clubic and part of the world press, took the opportunity to present something new this week: the URL, its Universal Robotic Labeler, translate “universal robotic labeler”. The machine, quite impressive in action, is capable of adapting the size of the labels according to the size and packaging of the packages to be sent, even those with the most irregular shapes.

Amazon’s new robot is intended for packages that are more difficult to label

It is becoming difficult to innovate in terms of robotics in the e-commerce sector. The limits are far from being reached in terms of innovation, but you have to show imagination to stand out from the competition. With its URL, its universal robotic labeler which bears its name rather aptly, Amazon manages to surprise.

Here we have a new machine, which is placed at the end of the chain of the test distribution center (which also has a very real activity which irrigates the surrounding tens of kilometers) in Vercelli. The automated labeler works at high speed to improve label placement on Amazon paper bags and on products shipped in their original packaging.

It is intended, for the moment, for smaller packages or products in a shape that is not flat, for which it is more difficult to ask a “traditional” machine to apply a label.

A labeler which from Amazon’s point of view only presents advantages

The major advantage of the URL robot is that it allows the size of the packaging to be increasingly reduced. Because it is able to adapt the size of the labels to that of the product that must be shipped. And even when the robot is faced with an unknown size or shape, the machine can interrupt its activity for a few seconds, the time to “think” about a suitable label.

A few moments later, the miracle happens: the URL prints and applies a label of the right size. The package is then ready for shipping. Amazon only sees advantages here: less paper used, in fact less waste, less headache for employees and further time savings.

The robot in any case complements the logic of Amazon, which has managed to reduce its packaging quite remarkably in recent months. Now, in Europe, one in two packages is delivered in recycled packaging, reduced in size or completely without packaging. As for our machine, it is tested in Italy, in Vercelli where we were, but also in the United States. There is no doubt that its use should be extended to other distribution centers in the coming months.