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Amazon planned to CAGE its workers so they avoid being injured by robots when moving around its warehouses revealed
The online giant has denied it is planning to use the design which a senior exec has admitted was a 'bad idea'
AMAZON was granted a patent for a “human cage” as a means of transporting staff around their warehouses without bumping into their thousands of robot workers.
The online giant has denied it is planning to use the design, patented in 2016, which a senior executive has admitted was a “bad idea”.
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It was recently highlighted in a case study called Anatomy of an AI System, published last Friday by academics Kate Crawford, of New York University, and Vladan Joler of the University of Novi Sad in Serbia.
Workers would sit in a cage-like enclosure on top of a claw-arm robot, which the researchers have described as an "extraordinary illustration of worker alienation."
According to the patent, the wheeled cage could be used to move staff around the busy "fulfilment centres" to avoid injury by the firm’s 100,000 robot workers which are used to move stock.
Crawford and Joler's work describes how "the worker becomes a part of a mechanic ballet, held upright in a cage which dictates and constrains their movement."
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Their paper claims the patent is "a stark moment in the relationship between humans and machines.”
Eight inventors in the Boston area, where Amazon Robotics is located, are credited for the patent.
In a comment to the Boston Herald, Amazon spokeswoman Lindsay Campbell said that the company files a number of "forward-looking patents" which encourages employees to experiment and invent.
Campbell said such a device is not in use in any Amazon fulfilment centres.
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Dave Clark, senior vice president of operations at Amazon also tweeted as a response to this patent receiving coverage calling the design “a bad idea.”
He posted: “Sometimes even bad ideas get submitted for patents. This was never used and we have no plans for usage.
“We developed a far better solution, which is a small vest associates can wear that cause all robotic drive units in their proximity to stop moving.”
A version of this story originally appeared on FoxNews.com.
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