According to Amazon, it has planned to appoint a huge number of new warehouse workers. The company announced that about 6,000 workers will be hired to meet the growing demand.

The new employees will join the team of about 50,000 workers who currently picking, packing and transporting orders across the United States. As per the company’s plan, some of that work will be done by robots.

During the IEEE’s International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Seattle, the American electronic commerce company announced a competition to find a robot that is capable of doing tasks like picking an item from shelves and pack them safely.

The robots were asked to retrieve products like safety glasses, a duck bath you, a bag of balls, a box of cookies and plush frog-shaped dog toy. The teams had just twenty minutes to finish the task. The teams received points by moving products and lost points by damaging or dropping an item.

During the competition, even the simplest product fools more than 30 robots. Camilo Alfonso Perez from the University of Alberta said think paperback books caused problems for his robot. The books were too thin for the robot to see and the robot’s fingers were too big to grasp them.

Kentaro Wada from the University of Tokyo represented a robot that was able to pick objects gently. The robot used suction to grasp the products. At the end of the competition, Wada’s robot completed the test. The team from the Technical University of Berlin won the competition and $20,000 prize by picking and packing 10 out of 12 items during its 20-minute test.

Amazon spokesperson Kelly Cheeseman said, “We already have over 15,000 robots in our fulfillment centers working alongside our employees. These technologies enhance jobs for employees, making them in many cases more efficient. Certainly the role for employees is still vital”.