Proteus 2.0: A robot you can just tell "bring it"

The original Proteus, which Amazon deployed in 25 US warehouses, was capable of transporting heavy carts in docking zones. The new generation, unveiled at the Delivering the Future event on June 3, 2026 in London, pushes the boundaries significantly further.

The robot can now operate anywhere within the entire logistics center — from goods receiving through transfers between workstations to dispatch. The key innovation is natural language understanding. An employee enters a task in ordinary conversational form, without any programming or technical commands. Proteus independently determines the priority, route, and timing.

"You tell it what needs to be done. It handles the priority, route, and timing on its own," described Scott Dresser, Vice President of Amazon Robotics. "It becomes your material handling assistant."

The new Proteus can transport containers weighing nearly 400 kilograms, taking over the most physically demanding tasks previously performed by humans. It is currently undergoing testing in Amazon's development laboratories and should arrive in European warehouses in the first half of 2027.

Vulcan and STARK: Robots with touch and collaboration

Proteus is not the only robotic novelty. Amazon is simultaneously expanding the Vulcan and STARK systems, which represent different approaches to automating warehouse operations.

Vulcan is Amazon's first robot equipped with haptic feedback — it can simultaneously see and feel objects, allowing it to navigate in densely packed spaces and handle fragile items. Originally developed for the warehouse in Spokane, Washington, it has already expanded to Hamburg, Germany, where it handles increasingly complex tasks in goods picking.

STARK is a collaborative robotic system that originated from a rank-and-file employee's idea for improving the work process. It works side by side with humans — picking full totes from conveyors and placing them onto carts. It was first piloted in Barcelona and is planned to expand to 15 European locations by 2027.

What this means for the Czech Republic

Amazon operates a large logistics center in Dobrovíz near Prague, which is one of the key nodes of its European distribution network. Although the specific deployment of new robots will depend on operational analyses of individual locations, the Europe-wide modernization wave is highly likely to reach the Czech warehouse as well.

For Czech Amazon customers, the investments primarily mean faster delivery. The "Add to Delivery" feature, which allows adding items to an existing order without paying additional shipping, will expand this year to the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, Italy, and France. The Sub Same-Day Delivery service, with delivery by 10:00 PM on the same day, is set to cover more than 25 European cities this year, including Coventry and Nuremberg.

As for whether Amazon Now — ultra-fast delivery within 30 minutes — will reach Prague or other Czech cities, Amazon remains silent for now. The service is currently expanding in London, Birmingham, Manchester, and India.

25,000 new jobs and a billion for education

In contrast to fears that robots are taking people's jobs, Amazon announced the creation of 25,000 new positions in European fulfillment centers over the coming years. Since introducing the first robots into its warehouses, Amazon has globally hired hundreds of thousands of employees and created entirely new professions — robotics maintenance technicians, system reliability specialists, and engineering roles.

At the same time, the company has allocated 1 billion dollars for the Career Choice program, which is part of the broader Future Ready 2030 initiative worth 2.5 billion dollars. The program offers fully funded education in high-demand fields:

• cybersecurity
• software development
• logistics and supply chain
• renewable energy
• mechatronics

Career Choice has so far been used by over 300,000 employees worldwide, including 30,000 in the United Kingdom. The goal is to retrain workers for positions that robotization creates, not eliminates.

AI as the backbone of the new logistics

Behind Proteus's ability to understand natural language are advanced AI models that Amazon develops internally. The company previously announced its own AI foundation model for managing the robotic fleet and this year deployed its one millionth robot. The combination of large language models with physical robotics — so-called embodied AI — is a trend accelerating across the entire industry in 2026.

Amazon is not pursuing the path of replacing people, but redistributing work: robots take over physically demanding and repetitive tasks, while people focus on managing the flow of goods, quality control, and technical maintenance. This model, referred to as collaborative robotics, differentiates Amazon from competitors that often bet on fully autonomous warehouses.

600 billion crowns per year. Europe as a priority

Amazon invested more than 60 billion euros (approximately 1.5 trillion crowns) in Europe in 2025 — the highest annual investment in the company's history on the continent. In total, it supports over 1.5 million jobs across Europe, of which 230,000 are core Amazon employees and another 600,000 positions have been created by European small and medium-sized enterprises selling through Amazon.

The investments also include an environmental dimension: a fleet of 50,000 electric delivery vehicles (including Rivian and Mercedes-Benz vehicles) is heading toward 100,000 by 2030. In Europe, Amazon has surpassed 100 million micromobility deliveries — using electric cargo bikes, mopeds, and walking couriers — saving over 17,000 tons of CO₂ emissions.

The end of backbreaking warehouse work, or clever marketing?

Amazon presents its robotics strategy as a win-win: employees get safer and less physically demanding work, customers get faster delivery. Skeptics, however, point out that the company is simultaneously increasing productivity and reducing dependence on human labor. Unions in the US and Europe regularly criticize working conditions in warehouses and warn that robotization will lead to headcount reductions, not growth.

The fact remains that Amazon has actually increased its employee count since the start of robotization. Whether this trend will hold up with the massive deployment of robots capable of understanding human speech and making autonomous decisions will only be shown by data from European warehouses in 2027–2028.