Amazon Patents Wristband That Can Track Warehouse Workers

Amazon has a new way to go along tabs on warehouse workers.

As GeekWire reports, the online retailer was awarded a pair of patents for a wristband-based monitoring organization that tin can runway warehouse workers' manus movements. The wristband would use ultrasonic sound pulses or radio transmissions to runway whether workers are placing items into and taking them out of the right inventory bins.

Amazon Wristband Tracking Patent "The system could send signals dorsum, setting the ring abuzz with a burst of 'haptic feedback' to let workers know their easily are heading for the right bin," GeekWire reports.

Amazon filed for the patents in 2022, though the system first fabricated headlines—and raised privacy concerns—when the applications were published last fall. The system might seem overly intrusive, but Amazon positions this equally something that could cut out certain repetitive tasks and assist workers be more productive.

The patent notes that "existing approaches for keeping track of where inventory items are stored…may require the inventory organization worker to perform time consuming acts across placing the inventory item into an inventory bin and retrieving the inventory item from the inventory bin, such as pushing a button associated with the inventory bin or scanning a barcode associated with the inventory bin."

The wristband-based system would presumably eliminate that extra step, allowing workers to simply place inventory in bins and remove it, as necessary, without having to push button a button or browse a barcode every time.

Figurer vision-based systems could exist used in a like way to rail inventory items, but that option would probable be "computationally intensive and expensive," the patent notes. "Appropriately, improved approaches for keeping track of where an inventory particular is stored are of interest."

There'due south no word as to whether Amazon plans to showtime using this engineering science in its warehouses any fourth dimension soon. We've reached out to the company for comment but take yet to hear dorsum.

Near Angela Moscaritolo

Angela Moscaritolo

Angela Moscaritolo is PCMag's skilful on fettle and smart home products. Pedagogy yoga for nearly 10 years has helped her in evaluating a range of connected health products including fitness trackers, heart charge per unit monitors, rowers, smart scales, stationary bikes, forcefulness training machines, treadmills, and more than. Angela also tests smart abode devices from her ranch in Florida, including air purifiers, kitchen appliances, and robot vacuums, just to name a few.