Inside look at Chicago's busiest UPS hub and Amazon's cutting-edge robots for the holiday shipping rush

HODGKINS, Ill. - As the holiday shopping and shipping season ramps up, delivery services are preparing for the surge, offering an inside look at the largest UPS hub in the Chicago area. Moreover, advancements in robotic technology are taking center stage in streamlining package movement.

Inside the UPS Consolidation Hub in Hodgkins, the extensive operation utilizes miles of belts and chutes, facilitating package transfers between box trailers with only two human touches – one for unloading and the other for loading. The entire process in between is automated, allowing the facility to process up to 3.2 million packages in a 24-hour period, according to Miguel Rodriguez, UPS Hodgkins CACH Operations Manager.

The Hodgkins facility, which employs 8,000 workers across its four shifts, is actively hiring for the upcoming holiday season.

Meanwhile, just outside Boston, specialized shipping robots are being developed and tested for Amazon, with more than 750,000 robots currently deployed by the company on four continents. One notable creation in development is a humanoid robot named "Digit."

Tina Lakinger from Amazon Robotics emphasized that these robots are intended to collaborate with human workers, enhancing their abilities rather than replacing them.

"It's not about labor replacement, it's about labor augmentation. So taking away those really boring, repetitive, tedious jobs and giving those to the robots," she explained.

Amazon asserts that human workers will always be essential for tasks requiring higher-level judgment. The robots, designed to operate at an extremely low failure rate, play a crucial role in expediting order fulfillment by 25 percent and managing inventory 75 percent quicker.