How does Amazon plan to keep automated warehouses free of debris? With automated cleanup robots, of course.

At least that’s a scenario laid out in a patent granted to the Seattle-based online retailer today. There’s no guarantee the cleanup robots will become a reality. But it makes a weird sort of sense to have robots pick up after messy robots.

The application, filed more than two years ago, describes a reporting network that can be used by workers, robots or sensor-equipped monitoring stations to alert a central control system to the presence of an out-of-place object – for example, a box that’s fallen out of a bin, or a piece of trash that’s been left in the aisle.

More at source: Geek Wire