# Amazon's touch-sensing robot Vulcan moved from Spokane to more complex picking at its Hamburg facility, alongside plans for a €10bn European investment and 25,000 more European fulfilment workers

Page: https://flyvolo.ai/en/changes/ev-20260604-warehouse-worker-2
Date: 2026-06-04 · Stage: Deployment
Can this record move a task judgement? yes
Occupation: https://flyvolo.ai/en/careers/warehouse-worker

## Scope

Amazon only, and only two named sites for Vulcan (Spokane, Hamburg) — the company does not say what share of picks it handles at either. Most of the same announcement is plan, not deployment: the natural-language Proteus is 'currently being piloted in Amazon's labs' with European deployment planned for the first half of 2027, and STARK was piloted in Barcelona with 15 European sites planned by 2027. The original Proteus, which moves carts rather than picks, is stated as deployed at 25 US fulfilment centres. The 25,000 is a planned growth of the European fulfilment workforce 'in the coming years', not a count of hires, and has no date.

## Source

- Amazon — https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/operations/amazon-proteus-robot-europe-investment-employee-support (primary source)

## What this means

Grasping is the task that kept picking human, and it is now moving — not everywhere, but at named sites, on the harder items. Read this next to the planned growth of 25,000 in the European fulfilment workforce in the same announcement: Amazon is not saying it needs fewer people in Europe, it is saying the shift is changing shape. Fewer picks per person done by hand, more standing at a station where the robot handles the reachable items and hands you the awkward ones.

## What it does not show yet

Amazon has not said what share of picks Vulcan handles, at Hamburg or anywhere. Two named sites in a network of hundreds is not an industry, and nothing here is measured by anyone but Amazon. The next-generation Proteus — the part that got the headline — is still in a lab, and by this site's own rules a lab is not even a pilot.

## How to verify it yourself

Ask on your own floor whether a picking arm has appeared at any station, and which items it is allowed to take — the allowed-item list, not the robot's existence, is the number that moves. Then watch whether Amazon names a third and fourth Vulcan site: a robot that stays at two sites for two years is a research project, one that reaches ten is a rollout.


More: https://flyvolo.ai/llms.txt