Amazon cancels the Blue Jay project in less than six months

Amazon has hundreds of thousands of robots in its warehouses, but that doesn’t mean everything it does with robotics is successful.

The ecommerce giant has suspended its Blue Jay warehouse service just months after unveiling the technology, as it originally did. was reported by Business Insider and verified by TechCrunch.

Blue Jay, a multi-purpose robot designed to analyze and move packages, was unveiled in October for use in the company’s same-day delivery facilities. At the time, the company was testing robots at a facility in South Carolina and said it had acquired Amazon limited time to produce Blue Jay — about a year — faster than it took to build its other warehouse robots, a pace the company said was advancing in AI.

Amazon spokesperson Terrance Clark told TechCrunch that Blue Jay was launched as a prototype — though that wasn’t made clear in the company’s initial release.

The company plans to use Blue Jay’s technology for “program management” robotics in which employees who work at Blue Jay can be transferred to other projects.

“We’re always testing new ways to improve our customer experience and make work safer, more efficient and more enjoyable for our employees,” Clark told TechCrunch via email. “At this point, we’re accelerating the adoption of the technology that’s been developed for Blue Jay, and almost all of the technology is being developed and we’ll continue to support employees across our entire network.”

Amazon also unveiled the Vulcan robot last year, which is used in the company’s warehouses. Vulcan is a two-armed robotwith one arm for reorganizing and moving things around the room while the other has a camera and suction cups to pick up stuff. Vulcan can “feel” things it touches and is trained on information gathered from real objects.

Amazon has been developing its own robotics program since 2012 when it bought Kiva Systems, a robotics company whose warehouse technology formed the basis of Amazon’s operations. It exceeded 1 million robots in its database July is over.