Two Blokes Talking Tech
Tech Guide #697 - Amazon's Delivering the Future announcements - new robotics, Alexa+ coming to Australia this year
10 Jun 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is Tech Guide with Stephen Fennec, the podcast that keeps you updated and educated.
Hello and welcome to Tech Guide episode 697. Great to have your company once again. Thank you for listening. My name is Stephen Fenwick and I'm the editor of techguide.com.au. On this week's show, we've just returned from London where we attended Amazon's Delivering the Future event. Plenty to talk about, including new robotics, Amazon Leo satellite internet.
We've seen new electric delivery vehicles and Alexa Plus has been fast-tracked for Australia. It is coming this year. We'll speak to Trevor Wood about that. In the Tech Guide reviews, we'll take a look at the new Aura Ring 5, which has just been released. Apple's App Store has racked up $2 trillion in transactions in 2025, and Telstra's satellite-to-mobile messaging began a year ago.
And we'll be answering all your questions in the Tech Guide help desk. And it's all brought to you by Netgear, the company that keeps you connected, and Norton, the company that keeps you protected. Well, as I said in the intro, we were in London last week, just got back a couple of days ago, and we were at Amazon's Delivering the Future event. It ran over a couple of days.
The main day was the second day, which was held at the Amazon Fulfillment Center in Dartmouth, just outside of London. And this was... A great venue to be talking about all these new announcements because this is where all of those will be deployed, including the new robotics as well.
We had a chance to ride some new electric delivery vehicles as well and also find out, well, initially we thought Alexa Plus was coming to Australia next year. But we had a nice little surprise. It is coming this year, but we'll talk more about that later. In this segment, I want to talk about the new robotics.
And Amazon is sort of one of the biggest companies when it comes to creating robotics for their business. And in this instance, it's Proteus, which is the next generation of Proteus has just been announced. And it's an autonomous robot. Now, the Proteus robots, you can see pictures of them on Tech Guide.
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Chapter 2: What new robotics were announced at Amazon's Delivering the Future event?
These are the robots that bring the shelves to the pickers. So the Amazon associates who actually pack the boxes, they pack the orders. The old model of the fulfillment center used to be the picker would grab a basket, look at what you've ordered, and go to the shelves, put it in the basket, bring it back, box it up, send it away. And that would take quite some time.
Those fulfillment centers are pretty massive and the shelves have to obviously be wide enough apart for people to be able to walk between them. Fast forward a couple of years and the new robotic fulfillment centers changed all of that.
Now, how Amazon fulfillment centers work now, and there is one in the outer western suburbs of Sydney in Kemp's Creek, which is one of the newer fulfillment centers, the robotic fulfillment centers. So the current scenario is the shelves come to the packer. So instead of them walking to the shelf, the shelf comes to them. And how the shelf comes to them? Sitting on top of Proteus.
Proteus, it looks like an oversized robot vacuum. That's the best I can describe it. There is pictures of it on TechGuide. But the difference with Proteus in this generation is that it can now communicate in plain language. So an associate might say, look, I need you to go to dock five and wait there so that you can be packed up.
And then boom, it'll head off to where it's told to go and obviously avoiding obstacles and everything in its way. Now, typically what happens, and we experienced this in Tokyo last year when we saw their fulfillment center there,
There is AI like a massive traffic cop just moving all these shelves around to the appropriate stations where they're needed, and it's all thanks to these robots, which can carry carts, or the big shelves, they call them carts. They weigh up to 400 kilograms, so they're pretty sturdy as well as being pretty smart.
and has really streamlined the operation from the time you click order on Amazon and goes through all these channels, the robots then kick into gear and your order is out the door on its way to you. So we've experienced this. The fastest order is like I order from Amazon a lot and I'd order something at maybe 8 o'clock at night, even later, 9 o'clock.
And because I'm a Prime member, which gives me free delivery on Amazon as well as the video service and also Amazon Music, it gives me as well. But... Because I click on that order and there are instances where the delivery is between 4 a.m. and 8 a.m. or 2 a.m. to 8 a.m.
And so I've often ordered something late at night, like a late 9, 10 o'clock even, and when I wake up, it's sitting on my doorstep. Now, that sort of efficiency is the result of these robotics. Last year alone, Amazon delivered more than 13.5 billion packages globally.
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Chapter 3: How does the Proteus robot improve Amazon's fulfillment process?
Now, I will admit I did write this story. It was sent to me under embargo, sent to all of us under embargo, and it had no mention of Australia, but it did mention that there were an additional 10 countries that will be receiving Alexa Plus next year. Now, I sort of had a bit of a chat with our Amazon friends and I said, look, can we assume that Australia is going to be one of these 10 countries?
And they basically, they didn't say no, but they also, they didn't say yes, but they also never said no either. So I took it upon myself that Australia would be part of the 2027 rollout and actually published that story. If anyone who read that early on would have seen that the headline read that it was coming in 2027.
Well, to my surprise, we did hear on stage from the head of Alexa in the UK, Trevor Wood, who we're going to talk to in a moment, he announced that it was actually coming to Australia this year, before the end of 2026. Now, Alexa Plus is a smarter, more conversational version of the Alexa that you know. So it's an upgraded AI-powered assistant. So it's tailored for each country that it's in.
That's why they need to take a staggered approach with this. So obviously one country's Alexa Plus isn't just an easy fit for another country. So it's not just about the information and the language. It's also about the culture and things that are known in that particular country. For example, in France, Alexa Plus will know everything about the debate between pain au chocolat and chocolatine.
It'll also know the ingredients for ratatouille and other favorites. In Australia, I'm hoping Alexa Plus will be across things like Vegemite. It'll know what a Shoei is. It'll also, if we say, look, I want a Chakasiki, it'll know what we're talking about. So if I ask it to buy, I want to go buy some, put some snags on the shopping list, it's going to know what I'm talking about as well.
But it goes further than that. In each country, and you're going to hear Trevor Wood talk about this in our interview, but in each country there are several partnerships which give Alexa Plus a little bit more power. A great example would be booking a table at a restaurant. So there are various partnerships with these booking agencies.
And so you could just say to Alexa Plus, look, book such and such a restaurant Friday night, 8 o'clock, and it'll go off and do it. It'll communicate with that service and then come back to you with a confirmation. Now, other agentic abilities like that would be being able to – the example I gave in the interview was you need to repair an appliance.
So get me some quotes on my dishwasher repair. So depending, again, on the partnerships in that particular country will be how this service is used. And the same thing can go for booking flights and other things associated like that. Remember early on when Alexa first hit the ground in Australia, there were a lot of what they called skills.
Remember you could attach a skill and that would then allow you to order your favourite pizza every Friday night or whatever you need to do or book a flight with Virgin Airlines or however the skill would be. So imagine that skill now taken to another level, which would have usually required a phone call and you using your time to complete the task, now being done in the background.
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Chapter 4: What innovative electric delivery vehicles did Amazon showcase?
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