'It's turning employees into robots!': Amazon patents wristband that tracks warehouse workers' movements
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Amazon has patented designs for a wristband to monitor and control workers movements in a controversial development that has already angered staff.
The wristband would track where warehouse employees put their hands and vibrate to alert them to move in a different direction to 'increase efficiencies'.
The news has raised alarm that the company is 'turning employees into robots' before technology allows humans to be replaced in their warehouses altogether.
One angry employee who did not want to be named told Mirror.co.uk: "They're trying to turn us into robots."
"They might as well stick a camera on every employees forehead so they can see what they do too."
The wristbands would use ultrasonic sound pulses or radio transmissions to tell a receiver where the workers’ hands are in relation to an array of inventory bins.
(Image: Amazon)
(Image: PA)
When a product is ordered from Amazon, the details are transmitted to a handheld computer that all warehouse staff carry.
Once the order comes through, staff must hurry to retrieve the product from one of many inventory bins on shelves, pack it into a delivery box and move on to the next job.
These new wristbands would vibrate to let an employee know if they were going in the wrong direction - and it would allow others to monitor how efficient they were.
(Image: PA)
(Image: Getty Images)
The patents, published today, were seen by GeekWire , which reports that the device is described by the company as a labour-saving measure to keep better track of items and deliveries.
The patent document stated: “Existing approaches for keeping track of where inventory items are stored … may require the inventory system worker to perform time consuming acts beyond placing the inventory item into an inventory bin and retrieving the inventory item from the inventory bid, such as pushing a button associated with the inventory bin or scanning a barcode associated with the inventory bin.
"Accordingly, improved approaches for keeping track of where an inventory item is stored are of interest.”
While the company aims to streamline processes at their warehouses, some employees say that their drive for efficiency can come at the staff's expense.
In late November, an undercover investigation by the Sunday Mirror found that staff were working in shocking conditions.
Reporter Alan Selby found employees were under constant pressure to process packages every 30 seconds during relentless 10hr shifts and would even fall asleep on their feet.
(Image: PA)
He said that Amazon had clearly decided that humans were the least efficient part of the operation, so in its facility in Tilbury, Essex, the robots took over.
"At every turn it felt like the human staff were reduced to livestock, existing only to service the machines.
"The repetitive, monotonous work at its ironically named "fulfilment centre" did me no favours mentally, either," he said.
Toilet breaks were timed and targets were "impossible", Selby found.
It is not known when or if the wristbands will become another part of the daily grind for employees at Tilbury.
Amazon were contacted for comment but had not replied by the time of publication.