From robotics to artificial intelligence, here's how Amazon gets its products to Houstonians in record time. Photo by Natalie Harms/InnovationMap

How Amazon's Houston fulfillment center uses AI technology and robotics to move millions of products

Prime time

Last summer, Amazon opened the doors to its North Houston distribution center — one of the company's 50 centers worldwide that uses automation and robotics to fulfill online orders.

The Pinto Business Park facility has millions of products in inventory across four floors. Products that are 25 pounds or less (nothing heavier is stocked at this location) pass through 20 miles of conveyor belts, 1,500 employees, and hundreds of robots.

The center also has daily tours open to the public. We recently visited to see for ourselves the process a product goes through at this Houston plant. From stowing to shipping, here's how packages go from your shopping cart to your front porch.

Starting with stowing 

Natalie Harms/InnovationMap

A product's first step in an Amazon facility is stowing. There's no categorization of the products — it's not like there's one floor for one type of item or anything.

"It's completely randomly stowed," says Donna Beadle, PR specialist for Amazon. "She could be stowing cat food on this floor, and so could somebody on floor two."

An Amazon employee would scan an item and stow it into an empty bin of her choosing — sort of. To prevent confusion, a light projected indicates bins that are off limits to stow the item. The light identifies bins that have similar products. Keeping similar products apart helps prevents mistakes for the employee who later pulls those items once its ordered.

The system also sees where the employee is putting each item, rather than having to scan each item and the bin as well. This is a newer feature — the facility originally opened with hand-held scanners.

"Our next generation workstation is that they don't have to hold that scanner — they have hands free," says Brenda Alford, regional communications manager at Amazon.

Robots on the move

Once the bins are fully stocked, the robot — which is the orange device on the bottom of the yellow bins — moves about the facility by scanning QR codes on the floor.

Should a product fall out, an employee wearing a special vest can enter to retrieve it. That vest will send off a signal to the robots, which will then decrease their speeds and come to a stop when the employee comes close.

"It's an extra measure of safety so that people can interact with the robots and feel safe," says Beadle.

Picking before packing

Natalie Harms/InnovationMap

Once an item is ordered, the bin with that item appears in the pick process at the center. The system tells the Amazon employee which item to grab and which bin to put it in. The bins will have products for multiple different orders — another employee later will separate it out later.

"Often we describe it as a symphony — our technology and our associates working together," Alford says, noting that sometimes the company might receive criticism about using robots over humans. "We can't do this without these humans.

Amazon employees receive their benefits from day one on the job, Beadle says, and they work four, 10-hour days a week.

"We feel like that way they have more time with their families — they get three days off versus two days off. And that gives them time to heal and rest up," she says.

Bin to bin and back again

Natalie Harms/InnovationMap

Once full, the Amazon associate will push the bin onto a series of conveyor belts. The whole facility has 20 miles of conveyor belts — much of which happens overhead.

The bins then zigzag toward the pack process, which is separated to different stations. There are single-product stations and multiple package stations. The system determines where the bin should go, and some stations pack products that are determined to need packing materials, while others do not.

Single-product packaging

Natalie Harms/InnovationMap

At the packing process, the Amazon employee is told which size box to assemble — he or she can grab a bigger box, but they can't select a smaller one. The tape dispenser doles out the correct size of tape for that box automatically.

Once packaged up, a sticker with a barcode is placed on the box. This code will later be used to print the label for shipping. At this point in the process, no personal information has been revealed to anyone. In fact, most packages leave the facility without any personal information being viewed by employees.

In an effort to reduce packing materials, some products are shipped in the container they came in. In that instance, the packer would just place the barcode sticker on the package before sending it on the conveyor belt.

"If we don't need another box for that product, we don't use one," Beadle says. "We work with companies to make that happen, so we don't have to use more boxes if we don't have to."

SLAM 


While the robotics aren't slamming labels on packages, the SLAM process (short for scan, label, apply and manifest) is the first step in the process that includes a customer's personal information. During this process, the barcode is scanned, the package is weighed, and the label is printed and affixed to the package using a puff of air.

A package might be automatically pulled from the line if something seems to be off in the package's weight.

"Say you bought toothpaste, and it says that toothpaste weighs 20 pounds, we know something's wrong," Beadle says. "Like maybe that it was a pack that didn't get separated."

If the package is kicked off, an Amazon associate, called a problem solver, will assess the situation and make it right before returning it to the conveyor belt.

Kicked into gear

Once labeled, all the packages are sent on their final conveyor belt ride. Using a scanning process, the packages are kicked by an automated foot that sends them into a line to be loaded into an Amazon truck.

If a package misses its chute the first time around, it makes the loop again. The system can tell if a package is caught in the loop for whatever reason, and a problem solver might be called to assess the situation.

Down the slide

Natalie Harms/InnovationMap

After being kicked off the belt, the package then slides down a spiral chute that, despite looking like a playground slide, is off limits to any humans wanting to keep their job.

"People ask if you can go down the slide, and we always say that on your last day of work," Beadle jokes.

On to the shipping process

Natalie Harms/InnovationMap

The packages leave the facility in Amazon trucks and head to one more pit stop before making it to the customer.

"They don't go directly to your house after this process," Beadle says. "They go to a sortation center."

This could mean a USPS or UPS stop, but it depends on where the customer lives.

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Houston professor awarded $2.6M grant for retina, neurological research

seeing green

University of Houston College of Optometry Professor John O’Brien has received a $2.6 million grant from the National Eye Institute to continue his research on the retina and neurological functions.

O’Brien is considered a leading expert in retinal neuroscience with more than 20 years of research in the field. The new funding will allow O’Brien and his team to continue to study the dense assembly of proteins associated with electrical synapses, or gap junctions, in the retina.

Gap junctions transfer electrical signals between neurons. And the plasticity of gap junctions changes the strength of a synapse, in turn changing how visual information is processed. Previous research has shown that reduced functions of electrical synapses could be linked to autism, while their hyperfunction may lead to seizures.

“The research we propose will significantly advance our understanding of the molecular complexes that control the function of electrical synapses,” O’Brien said in a news release.

The team at UH will work to identify the proteins and examine how they impact electrical synapses. It is particularly interested in the Connexin 36, or Cx36, protein. According to O’Brien, phosphorylation of Cx36, a short-term chemical modification of the protein, serves as a key driver of plasticity. And the protein has been linked to refractive error development, which is one of the largest vision problems in the world today.

Additionally, OBrien’s research has shown that plasticity is essential for all-day vision, allowing the retina to adjust sensitivity and sharpen images. He has also built a catalog of the core set of proteins surrounding electrical synapses that are conserved across species. His research has been funded by the NEI since 2000.

5 minority-founded Houston startups shine as Innovation Awards finalists

Meet the Finalists

Houston is one of the most diverse cities in the nation, and that trend carries over into its innovation and startup ecosystem.

As part of the 2025 Houston Innovation Awards, our Minority-founded Businesses category will honor an innovative Houston startup founded or co-founded by BIPOC or LGBTQ+ representation.

Five minority-founded businesses have been named finalists for the 2025 award. The finalists, selected by our esteemed panel of judges, range from a wearable health tech device company to a clean chemical manufacturing business to a startup with a lunar mission.

Read more about these innovative businesses, their initiatives, and their inspirational founders below. Then join us at the Houston Innovation Awards on Nov. 13 at Greentown Labs, when the winner will be unveiled at our live awards ceremony.

Tickets are on now for this exclusive event celebrating all things Houston Innovation.

Capwell Services

Houston-based methane capture company Capwell Services works to eliminate vented oil and gas emissions economically for operators. According to the company, methane emissions are vented from most oil and gas facilities due to safety protocols, and operators are not able to capture the gas cost-effectively, leading operators to emit more than 14 million metric tons of methane per year in the US and Canada, equivalent to more than 400 million metric tons of CO2e per year. Founded in 2022, Capwell specializes in low and intermittent flow vents for methane capture.

The company began as a University of Pennsylvania senior design project led by current CEO Andrew Lane. It has since participated in programs with Greentown Labs and Rice Clean Energy Accelerator. The company moved to Houston in 2023 and raised a pre-seed round. It has also received federal funding from the DOE. Capwell is currently piloting its commercial unit with oil and gas operators.

Deep Anchor Solutions

Offshore energy consulting and design company Deep Anchor Solutions aims to help expedite the adoption of floating offshore energy infrastructure with its deeply embedded ring anchor (DERA) technology. According to the company, its patented DERA system can be installed quietly without heavy-lift vessels, reducing anchor-related costs by up to 75 percent and lifecycle CO2 emissions by up to 80 percent.

The company was founded in 2023 by current CEO Junho Lee and CTO Charles Aubeny. Lee earned his Ph.D. in geotechnical engineering from Texas A&M University, where Aubeny is a professor of civil and environmental engineering. The company has not raised VC funding, but has participated in numerous accelerators and incubators, including Greentown Labs, MassChallenge, EnergyTechNexus LiftOff and others. Lee is an Activate 2025 fellow.

Mars Materials

Clean chemical manufacturing business Mars Materials is working to convert captured carbon into resources, such as carbon fiber and wastewater treatment chemicals. The company develops and produces its drop-in chemical products in Houston and uses an in-licensed process for the National Renewable Energy Lab to produce acrylonitrile, which is used to produce plastics, synthetic fibers and rubbers. The company reports that it plans to open its first commercial plant in the next 18 months.

Founded in 2019 by CEO Aaron Fitzgerald, CTO Kristian Gubsch and lead engineer Trey Sheridan, the company has raised just under $1 million in capital and is backed by Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy, Shell, Black & Veatch and other organizations.

Torres Orbital Mining (TOM)

Space tech company Torres Orbital Mining aims to pioneer the sustainable extraction and processing of lunar regolith and designs and builds robotic systems for excavating, classifying, and delivering lunar material. The company aims to accelerate a permanent and ethical human presence on the Moon.

The company was founded this year by Luis Torres, a current MBA candidate at Rice Business.

Wellysis USA Inc.

Wellysis USA Inc. works to detect heart rhythm disorders with its continuous ECG/EKG monitor with AI reporting. Its S-Patch cardiac monitor is designed for extended testing periods of up to 14 days on a single battery charge. The device weighs only 9 grams, is waterproof and designed to be comfortable to wear, and is considered to have a high detection rate for arrhythmias. It is ideally suited for patient-centric clinical trials to help physicians make diagnoses faster, cheaper and more conveniently.

It was established in Houston in 2023 and participated in the JLABS SFF Program the same year. It closed a $12 million series B last year. It was founded by CEO Young Juhn, CTO Rick Kim, CFO JungSoo Kim and chief strategy officer JoongWoo Kim.

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The Houston Innovation Awards program is sponsored by Houston Community College, Houston Powder Coaters, FLIGHT by Yuengling, and more to be announced soon. For sponsorship opportunities, please contact sales@innovationmap.com.

The Ion taps John Reale for startup and investor role

new hire

The Ion has named John "JR" Reale as its director for startups and investor engagement.

In his new role, Reale, a longtime leader in Houston’s startup ecosystem, will work to strengthen the innovation district's founder and investor network.

"Here’s what I’ve come to believe: the Ion is not just a building, not just a real estate play, and not just another innovation district. COVID, remote work, and shifting market dynamics changed the rules. Key ingredients like co-working, events, and community, while impactful, are no longer enough on their own," Reale shared on a LinkedIn post announcing the move. "What’s needed are advantages ... We need to intentionally design a system that repeatedly delivers advantages so founders can pull forward their visions."

Reale previously served as executive in residence and venture partner at TMC Venture Fund and co-founded Station Houston. He also serves as managing director of Integr8d Capital. He's an investor and serves on the board of directors for a number of venture-backed companies, including Cart.com, Lionguard and others.

The Ion will host "Today Is Day One – A conversation with John (JR) Reale" to welcome Reale to the role on Tuesday, Oct. 21. Reale will be joined at the event by Heath Butler, partner at Mercury, to discuss their thoughts on shaping Houston's founders ecosystem, as well as the Ion’s Founder Advantage Platform.

"On top of this connected architecture, we will build product. That product will be the Founder Advantage Platform to remove friction, compress time, and compound outcomes," Reale continued on LinkedIn. "This is the system that will drive repeatable experiences, and naturally, make these journeys so much more fun."