Battlefield robots were once thought of as the stuff of science fiction. But the Ukraine war has put paid to that view, with uncrewed ground vehicles (UGVs) – or ground robots – taking on an increasingly visible role. In September 2026, Mykhailo Fedorov, the former defense minister of Ukraine – who is generally credited with […]

The post Could humanoid robots soon replace soldiers on the battlefield? appeared first on Asia Times.

Amazon warehouse workers used to spend much of their days walking, pushing carts through long aisles to manually retrieve customer orders from shelves.

Today, hundreds of "Hercules" robots do this instead, carrying towering yellow storage pods filled with inventory to employee workstations.

"I'd walk like 10 miles a day on average," said Mohammed Khan, who started as an entry-level picker 12 years ago and is now a senior manager at an Amazon warehouse in Tracy, California.

Amazon's robots "cut down all that walking time," he told Business Insider during a recent tour of the facility.

This site is ground zero for a wave of automation that's beginning to wash over the industry. The warehouse and logistics sectors have been powerful sources of job growth since Amazon kicked off the e-commerce revolution 30 years ago, as Business Insider's award-winning Warehouse Nation series revealed in 2022.

If robots automate many warehouse tasks, this powerful engine of job growth could grind to a halt, wiping out thousands of positions and countless opportunities for future workers.

Amazon says employees are being retrained to do more valuable work, such as managing and maintaining robots. Will these new jobs be enough to cover what might be lost? Or could we actually end up with more or better jobs?

Business Insider went looking for answers inside the giant facility in Tracy, a city in California's Central Valley where suburban neighborhoods give way to open farmland.

"Autonomous to an extent"

Across 1.4 million square feet — the equivalent of 23 football fields — robots with names like Hercules, Robin, Cardinal, Pegasus, and Proteus move inventory and sort packages. But they don't run the warehouse alone. Human workers still pick and pack orders, load trucks, and intervene when automated systems fail.

Jobs have not disappeared, but they're changing. Machines increasingly handle work that once required employees to walk miles and lift boxes, while workers monitor and troubleshoot them. The Tracy site employs more than 3,000, up from roughly 1,000 when it opened in 2023, an Amazon spokesperson told Business Insider.

"They're autonomous to an extent," Khan said of his robot counterparts. "They still need a lot of help and maintenance and oversight."

An Amazon spokesperson said rising customer demand drove the facility's workforce growth and that robots help workers process more packages safely and efficiently rather than simply replacing them.

Amazon's more automated, next-generation fulfillment centers are about 25% more productive and cut order-processing time by as much as 25%. And these sites support roughly 30% more skilled jobs in areas including reliability, maintenance, and engineering.

The "Quarterback" watches robots

One of the workers now doing that kind of job is Briana Brager.

She joined Amazon about two years ago as an entry-level employee after spending years caring for her family. She had no prior experience in a traditional workplace.

Today, she's a process assistant who helps oversee the warehouse's robotic systems. When a chute jams or a robot stops working, she coordinates the response to keep packages moving.

"The robots do a lot, but we still have to maintain them," she said.

Brager began as a picker before moving into a specialized role supporting robotic-floor operations. She got two weeks of intensive training, followed by additional job shadowing, to learn how to work safely around the equipment. Her current job is less physically demanding than her previous one, she said.

Her role is informally known as the "quarterback" position. She monitors fleets of robots and dispatches employees when a machine needs intervention.

"We call the shots," Brager said.

Meet Robin

At the Tracy warehouse, humans and robots move orders together from storage to the loading dock. Employees stow individual items in fabric inventory pods, which Hercules robots carry to pick stations. Workers retrieve the items, then pack and label them.

Robin, a large robotic arm, picks finished packages off a conveyor and places them on small Pegasus mobile robots. Pegasus carries the packages to staging areas alongside other orders headed to the same destination. Cardinal then loads the sorted orders into carts, and Proteus ferries the carts toward outbound trucks.

Khan, the warehouse manager, said workers performed Robin's task manually until a few years ago. They handled packages one at a time, checked them for damage, scanned them, and fed them into the sorting system. He estimated that one Robin can perform roughly the work of two to seven people doing that process manually.

Amazon said that when it introduces systems such as Robin, employees take on other work at the site, including operating robots, clearing jams, monitoring the robotic floor and quality control, and maintenance engineering.

Robots move the carts, too

Proteus offers a clear example of how these new warehouse jobs are taking shape. Amazon brought the robots to Tracy last year.

Unlike Hercules, which operates in fenced-off areas, Proteus can move through spaces shared with people. There are roughly 200 of the robots at the Tracy facility, Amazon said.

Before Proteus arrived, workers manually pushed carts filled with packages to the loading dock. Now the robots pick up full carts, carry them to staging areas near the dock, and retrieve empty carts for the return trip.

Some employees who once moved those carts now work as "ground-floor monitors," Amazon said. Instead of spending their shifts moving packages, they respond when a Proteus reports a fault. If the problem is simple, they can reset the robot; otherwise, human maintenance staff take over.

Some workers trained in these jobs have gone on to Amazon's mechatronics apprenticeship program, which can lead to more technical maintenance work.

When automation hits the "jackpot"

For all the robots moving through the Tracy warehouse, people remain essential when automation breaks down.

Amazon calls one such destination the "jackpot." When an item loses its routing information while moving through the facility, the automated system sends it to this area, which works a bit like a lost-and-found for packages.

Here, a human worker must determine where the wayward package belongs and return it to the correct flow. "It will require manual intervention," an Amazon representative said.

Other situations require human judgment, too. Products can fall from storage pods and inventory can be damaged or mislabeled. Packing individual products into boxes and loading them onto delivery vehicles are tasks that also remain heavily dependent on people.

This helps explain why even a highly automated Amazon warehouse still employs thousands of workers. The company said it needs people for new packing stations as well as roles across the facility that keep operations running safely and efficiently.

Current and future Tetris

By the time packages get to the loading dock at the Tracy facility, the robots are gone. At least for now.

A person loads each trailer. Amazon uses equipment that extends into the trailer and adjusts to a worker's height, reducing bending and back-and-forth walking. But workers still arrange the packages themselves, trying to fill the trailer to use as much of the space as possible.

"It's a lot of Tetris," one Amazon representative said.

Amazon is already exploring how to automate this task, though. As Business Insider previously reported, Project Tetromino aims to use AI and robotics to automate sorting and vehicle loading at delivery stations, where the work has long remained stubbornly manual.

But that vision remains a work in progress. Amazon's machines can carry shelves, sort packages, stack boxes, and move carts around people. Workers still pack orders, load trailers, perform quality checks, handle hiccups and exceptions, and keep the machines running when they fail.

For Amazon, the immediate payoff is not necessarily a warehouse with fewer people, but one where the same workforce can accomplish more. Tracy employs roughly the same number of people as a nearby Amazon facility with fewer robots, company officials said, but the Tracy location processes more volume.

Khan compared the technology to something far less futuristic: a calculator.

The robots streamline work that once consumed employees' time without necessarily eliminating the work itself, he said. "It's not that the amount of work has changed," he said. "It's how we approach it."

Asked whether robots could eventually replace more jobs, including his own, Khan did not try to predict the future.

"Who knows? That's not in our purview right now," he said. "But I would say roles are evolving, and that's the cool aspect about it."

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• Ukraine's ground robots are carrying grenade launchers into dangerous areas.
• The robots bring short-range firepower closer to Russian troops without exposing Ukrainian soldiers.
• A brigade said operators tens of kilometers away used armed robots to pulverize Russian positions.

Ukraine is mounting grenade launchers on ground robots, allowing its forces to bring useful firepower closer to Russian troops without sending in soldiers to pull the trigger.

Grenades have long been important in Ukraine's fight against Russia's invasion, particularly in close-quarters trench combat, but the battlefield is changing.

Troops increasingly fight in smaller force concentrations from scattered defensive positions rather than heavily manned continuous trench networks. Meanwhile, the growing "kill zone, which is swarming with drones, makes it harder for troops to approach these front-line positions. While infantry remains critically important, drones and robots are bridging the gap and taking over more and more missions, from logistics to medevac to assault.

Defense manufacturers told Business Insider that grenade launchers are increasingly being mounted on uncrewed ground vehicles, or UGVs, allowing soldiers to strike Russian positions from a safer distance.

Oleg Fedoryshyn, the director of R&D for the Ukrainian robotic and defense company DevDroid, told Business Insider that grenade launchers are useful because soldiers "don't need to see the enemy to hit him."

A soldier in hiding is easier to hit with a grenade launcher than, say, a machine gun, which is a line-of-sight weapon.

Now, soldiers can mount them on ground robots so that they don't have to put themselves in harm's way. A soldier-carried grenade launcher might have a range of a few hundred meters, but using a robot, an operator can be tens of kilometers away.

DevDroid's TW-40 ground robotic system has a range of 70 kilometers on paved roads and up to 50 kilometers off-road, making it effective in the kill zone. And the mounted grenade launcher has a reach of 1.5 kilometers.

Ukraine has been using soldier-carried and truck-mounted grenade launchers since before Russia began its full-scale invasion in February 2022. The robots deliver similar firepower without risking human lives.

Ukraine's Third Army Corps, for example, said in September that it used grenade launchers on robots to "dismantle enemy positions" in its Operation Vivaldi, characterizing it as "a new tactic."

"Equipped with dual Bullspike grenade launchers, the UGVs attacked Russian positions before detonating directly inside the enemy's shelters. The occupiers believed they were under assault by an entire assault squad; in reality, they were being pulverized by the Third Assault Brigade's robots," the brigade wrote on Telegram.

It said that robots were able to strike, put psychological pressure on Russian forces, and clear the position "all without putting our infantry at risk."

"This is a tactic never before seen in the history of warfare. The robots were controlled by operators from a secure shelter located tens of kilometers away from the front line."

Robots armed with grenade launchers are another example of how this war is blending elements of old warfare with new, advanced technologies. In this war, it's not uncommon to see drones dropping grenades or electronic warfare sharing the battlefield with artillery.

In addition to grenade launchers, robots can also fire other weapons, such as RPGs and American-made M2 Browning machine guns.

DevDroid's goal with its systems is "to change all roles that we can change to save people's lives," Fedoryshyn said.

That goal is shared by Ukraine's soldiers, defense industry, and leadership. Oleksandr Yabchanka, the head of the robotic systems for Ukraine's Da Vinci Wolves Battalion, told Business Insider that Ukraine is constantly working to increase the distance between troops and the fighting.

"Our philosophy is, above all, to preserve our personnel," he explained. "We strive to position our fighters as far as possible from the line of contact and the zones of highest risk — the so-called 'kill zones.'"

Other manufacturers say they're seeing a shift in how soldiers use armed robots in combat.

Defense firm Frontline Robotics makes the Buria autonomous remote weapon station, which allows soldiers to fire grenade launchers and other weapons remotely. Early last year, Ukrainian forces were hiding them in prepared locations to stop Russian advances.

"But right now, everything has changed," Mykyta Rozhkov, chief business development officer, told Business Insider, pointing to the growing drone saturation on the battlefield.

Now, it's being mounted on UGVs, creating small tanks that can advance toward Russian positions without exposing troops.

DevDroid's Fedoryshyn said robots armed with grenade launchers are most effective when paired with robots carrying machine guns and aerial drones that can spot targets and direct fire.

Robots can be used to transport gear, evacuate the wounded, blow up enemy positions, lay mines, and fire various types of weaponry. Their use has increased dramatically. Ukraine's defense ministry said in June that it had contracted over 22,000 uncrewed ground vehicles so far in 2026, nearly twice as many as all of the previous year.

The Da Vinci Wolves' Yabchanka said that he sees that "many units have begun employing UGVs. This usage has already become widespread. Ground-based robotic systems are becoming an integral part of combat operations for most units deployed along the line of contact."

As UGV use grows, Rozhkov said that Frontline Robotics' goal is to "provide different robotic solutions to get people outside the danger zone. So just to keep the line with the robots."

• Machenta raised $40 million in seed funding led by Creandum and Union Square Ventures.
• It says robots can learn tasks from one demo using a model trained entirely in simulation.
• The startup remains focused on research as it takes on multibillion-dollar rivals.

A London-based robotics startup is betting it can teach robots new tricks without collecting the mountains of real-world data its much bigger rivals are chasing.

Machenta, founded by researchers from Imperial College London, has raised a $40 million seed round to build an AI model that can teach robots new physical tasks after seeing them performed just once, the company exclusively told Business Insider. Venture capital firms Creandum and Union Square Ventures co-led the round. Machenta declined to disclose its valuation.

While rivals building general-purpose AI models for robots are scrambling to amass real-world data, Machenta is taking a contrarian approach. Edward Johns, the startup's CEO and cofounder, and an Imperial professor, said the company trains its model in computer-generated environments that mimic how objects move and interact, without using a "single pixel of real-world data."

Once trained, the model can direct a robot to perform a new task, such as tidying a table or putting objects into a box, after watching it done just once, without further training, Johns said. In a video shared with Business Insider, three robots pack and close a box on an assembly line, a task Johns said they learned this way.

The startup has 11 employees and remains focused on research, with no near-term plans to commercialize its technology. Its model can learn some tasks immediately, but more precise tasks and complex movements remain challenging.

Machenta faces rivals with multibillion-dollar valuations in one of robotics' most competitive and well-funded fields. Its California-based competitors include Physical Intelligence, valued at roughly $11 billion, and FieldAI, which is raising funding at a $10 billion valuation, Business Insider reported this month.

Another rival, Skild AI, which is valued at over $14 billion, is already selling technology with similar capabilities. In August, Skild unveiled a model that it said could perform previously unseen tasks lasting up to 10 minutes after a single video demonstration. Last month, it said that it had reached $100 million in annual recurring revenue from more than 60 customers.

From research lab to startup

Six years ago, Johns began investigating whether robots could learn new physical tasks as quickly as humans at his Imperial College lab.

In the lab's early experiments, researchers physically guided a robot through a task, such as picking up a spatula and scooping an object. The robot then spent about 30 minutes collecting additional data about the object and its surroundings before it could perform the task on its own.

Johns and former Ph.D. student Vitalis Vosylius spent the next few years working to eliminate that extra step, founding Machenta late last year after seeing early signs that their model could perform new tasks immediately after a demonstration.

Companies are increasingly buying and collecting data to teach robots how to interact with the real world. But Johns believes simply collecting more data isn't the answer. It also remains unclear how much training data will be needed to make general-purpose robots a reality. Johns said that Machenta is taking on the harder challenge of designing algorithms that can generate synthetic data useful for teaching robots physical tasks.

Machenta plans to use the funding to expand its team and train its model with more computing power and simulated data, hoping to teach robots to perform more precise and complex tasks.

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Captured Russian soldiers have a rule for one stretch of the Kupiansk front: go anywhere, but not there.

That stretch is the “safety corridor” the “Orion” unit of Ukraine’s Offensive Guard brigade “Pomsta” says it has built for its ground robots. The zone is so lethal that, by the unit’s count, 88% of attacking Russians are killed before they reach their positions, and Russian armor cannot get within 25 kilometers, the military outlet ArmyInform reports.

Behind that shield, the unit says its ground robots have run dozens of fully autonomous missions through the most dangerous ground on the axis, with a success rate of 99.57%. The results made Orion the top-ranked unit for effectiveness on the South-Kupiansk axis in September within Ukraine’s battlefield management system, DELTA.

“You can go anywhere, just not into the Orion zone”

The claim that the Russians now avoid the sector, the unit says, comes from them themselves.

“Prisoners admit in interviews: 'You can go anywhere, just not into the Orion zone.' Eighty-eight percent of the enemy is destroyed before reaching their positions, and Russian equipment cannot approach closer than 25 kilometers,” the unit says.

That is what opens the corridor. Where a human supply run would be a death sentence, a robot can cross, and cross again.

The quiet blood of the front

The point, the unit says, is to take the soldier out of the deadliest job on the front: carrying ammunition and the wounded across open fire.

“We broke the stereotype that supplying the army takes truck convoys and hundreds of soldiers under targeted fire. Our robotic systems are the ‘quiet blood’ of the front,” Vladyslav Zolotarov, an officer in the unit’s staff control group, says.

When Russia thinks our positions are depleted, a tracked platform quietly comes in at night and brings in a ton of ammunition.

In September alone, the unit says, its wheeled and tracked robots ran 85 of the hardest combat missions and hauled more than 30,000 kilograms of cargo. Its evacuation record is the line it is proudest of: four missions pulling wounded soldiers out by robot, all four successful, not one man lost.

Ukraine has bet heavily on this kind of machine, aiming to field 50,000 ground robots to keep its troops out of the drone-ruled kill zone.

• Bill Gates says AI will bring about an age of abundance in 20 years, but it'll be a rocky road.
• He predicted robots will displace human workers and "build houses, grow food, do surgery."
• Some jobs might be reserved for people, and work limits could preserve employment, Gates said.

Bill Gates says AI will create "true abundance," but the next two decades before it arrives will be "as tumultuous a period as there's been in human history."

"My big concern is this 20-year transition period, where they'll have winners and losers and a lot of disruption," the Microsoft cofounder and billionaire philanthropist said on the latest episode of the "Decoder" podcast.

Gates echoed widespread concerns about white-collar jobs, saying that telesales, telesupport, and accounting will disappear as AI will be able to do those "radically cheaper, radically faster, and even more accurately." As for blue-collar jobs, humanoid robots will take over those, he said.

"If we don't choose to massively slow down or stop, then we will have robots that can build houses, grow food, do surgery," Gates said. "And none of the things that human labor provides to the economy will be necessary for most goods and services."

He also underscored how jarring it will be for someone like him, whose vast resources have allowed him to lead the charge toward eliminating malaria and tackling other humanitarian crises.

"And when the AI says to me, 'No, I'm better than you, you go play pickleball and I'll get back to you, I'm gonna take care of this' — I mean, it's kind of humorous, but it's not humorous," he said.

Gates shared his long-held view that work is vital to giving people a sense of purpose, a way to earn an income, a reason to show up every day, an avenue to build relationships with colleagues, and a path to build things and solve problems.

He suggested that certain activities such as art, sports, cooking, and childcare could one day be reserved for humans, "even though the AI could do those things better."

Gates also highlighted that measures such as early retirement and caps on working hours could help maintain some level of human employment.

He envisioned some people saying, "Let's be like the Amish and let's only use AI for certain things," so they won't have to give up "helping each other or coming up with unique ideas."

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon have both proposed a shorter workweek as a less painful alternative to AI-driven unemployment.

Gates is one of several tech leaders to warn of job disruption on the road to an age of abundance.

Elon Musk has predicted a "bumpy" transition and proposed government checks for all as the best solution to AI-driven job losses. He's said that technology will drive production costs so low that everyone can have "whatever stuff they want," work will become "optional," and it's not worth saving for retirement in 10 or 20 years as money won't matter.

Similarly, Anthropic's Dario Amodei has said that AI promises to "raise the quality of life for everyone," but the "short-term shock will be unprecedented in size."

However, OpenAI's Sam Altman said in May that AI hasn't eliminated as many white-collar jobs as he expected, and he no longer anticipates a "jobs apocalypse."

Despite widespread worry about AI taking corporate jobs, and high-profile layoffs at major companies such as Amazon and Meta, national unemployment hasn't increased materially during the AI boom.

Ukrainian company Nodrics has developed MAT1LDA, an eight-wheeled amphibious ground robot that can carry supplies across water, swamps, and rough terrain, robot-maker Tencore said, Ukrainian military outlet Militarnyi reported on 17 October. The machine joins Tencore’s new family of ground robots, which the company has also shown in the US.

Ukraine’s ground robots now haul supplies and evacuate wounded soldiers through zones where drones make every move deadly, and the Defense Ministry has launched its first competitive tender for them.

500 kg on land, 400 kg afloat

A petrol engine drives MAT1LDA’s eight wheels, and side pontoons keep it afloat, so it can cross water, marshland, and rough ground without preparation, Militarnyi said. Its makers claim it carries up to 500 kg on land and 400 kg on water, with a range of up to 160 km on land and 50 km on water.

Its open frame lets crews swap equipment quickly to suit the task, fitting cargo containers or evacuation stretchers.

Explore further

Robots won’t replace armored vehicles, says Ukrainian company that builds both. It reveals one job they can’t do

Four robots, one system

MAT1LDA is part of the Tencore Ecosystem, which brings together four classes of ground robots for military and civilian work, Militarnyi reported earlier. Besides the amphibious eight-wheeler, it includes the tracked TerMIT, the wheeled TOR 4×4, and the TRAX Utility firefighting and rescue robot. The company says it has delivered more than 4,000 robots to Ukraine’s armed forces since the full-scale invasion, used across more than 50 brigades.

Tencore calls it Ukraine’s first integrated ecosystem of its kind. Putting the platforms into one system is meant to make them easier to use, maintain, and fit with extra equipment. One of the first shared add-ons is AI KIT, a hardware and software module that lets a robot keep to its route or drive back on its own after losing contact with its operator.

On show in Washington

Tencore displayed MAT1LDA carrying a TerMIT robot at the Association of the US Army’s annual trade show in Washington this month, Breaking Defense reported.

Other Ukrainian makers have built swimming ground robots too: one switches from land to water in seconds, and another can tow 10 tons, its maker says. In April, Tencore formed a joint venture with France’s Shark Robotics.

Ukraine’s six-wheeled Frodo ground robot fired on targets during a demonstration in Kharkiv Oblast for the Pomsta (Revenge) Border Guard Brigade, a border guard detachment posted on Facebook. Frodo made its public debut only on 30 September.

Ukraine had contracted more than 22,000 ground robots for 2026 by July, mostly logistics carriers, with combat models the smallest group, the Defense Ministry said. Frodo’s first reported mission was an evacuation. The demo shows its armed version to a fighting brigade, the kind of robot Ukraine has ordered least.

What the armed version carries

The platform completed its tasks at a training ground in near-combat conditions, said the 3rd Border Guard Detachment named after Hero of Ukraine Colonel Yevhenii Pikus. The Buria turret mounted on Frodo can fire either a Mk 19 automatic grenade launcher or a Browning M2 heavy machine gun. It engaged targets at up to 1.3 km (0.8 mile), the detachment said.

The 47-kg (104-lb) module has a ballistic calculator, stores up to 256 targets, aims in three seconds, and has a stated autonomous run time of up to 48 hours, the post said. Frodo is rated for up to 150 km (93 miles) on paved roads and 75–80 km (47–50 miles) over rough terrain, the post added. A Frontline Robotics Zoom reconnaissance drone flew reconnaissance during the test.

The developer, Frontline Robotics, describes its core philosophy as arriving fast, doing the job, and leaving very fast—hit and run, the detachment’s post said. Familiarizing the brigade’s soldiers with such systems aims first and foremost to preserve personnel’s lives and health, the detachment said.

A robot first reported as a medevac

Frontline Robotics told Militarnyi at the unveiling that Frodo had passed Defense Ministry codification and was built for logistics, evacuation, and strike missions. The robot reaches 40 km/h (25 mph) and carries up to 200 kg (441 lb) of payload, or 400 kg (882 lb) at most, the company said. A single soldier can swap its batteries.

The 92nd Assault Brigade used an early test unit to evacuate a wounded soldier, Frontline Robotics told Militarnyi. An operator, callsign Tango, named the robot’s speed and its ability to handle complex maneuvers as its main advantages, Militarnyi reported.

Yumi Nu is one of the world’s most sought-after models. An American citizen of Dutch and Japanese descent, and the niece of DJ Steve Aoki, she has appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated and walked for L’Oréal and Victoria’s Secret. On September 22, at Vogue World in Milan, Nu shared the runway with a group of inexperienced intruders: four humanoid robots built by the Chinese company Unitree Robotics.

Seguir leyendo

In this story for MIT Technology Review, Sara Harrison explores the field of social robotics and the growing use of robot companions as therapy for autistic and other neurodivergent kids. These playful machines show promise: Research suggests that they can help children practice social skills and offer something overworked therapists and exhausted parents can’t—a patient companion, available 24/7. But Harrison also reports on their limitations and risks. Does this approach truly work? What about all the data gathered on the child? And what happens when a robot friend suddenly stops working and “dies”? A fascinating and unsettling look at tech that has moved into the most intimate corners of a family’s home.

While Moxie found herself in more and more people’s homes, Embodied still struggled to make money. In 2024, the company announced it would cease operations. Its robots—which depended on external servers that the company could no longer pay for—would descend into a deep slumber. 

Videos of bereft children who seemed to have become deeply attached to the blue bot began to circulate online. “I don’t want her to leave,” wailed one child in a TikTok video. Desperate parents posted on TikTok, Instagram, and Reddit looking for solutions. “My autistic child is devastated and I’m pissed,” wrote one parent. “Hope Embodied gives us a couple days to say goodbye,” wrote another.