The cage design is probably objectively pretty bad (I don't want to work in there), but the headline is a bit sensationalist. The idea here is that Amazon has a bunch of robots running around in a massive environment. Safe robot-human interaction in close contact situations is still a research problem. This device is obviously meant for the safety of the operator if a robotics engineers looked at it. I know people don't really like big companies and Amazon, but in this case I think the reporting is a bit over the top. The intention of the system is not to enslave humans. The technology is nowhere near there. If anything, we're enslaved by them because they're constantly broken and we have to go fix them by riding this cage of a robot!
> Here, the worker becomes a part of a machinic ballet, held upright in a cage which dictates and constrains their movement.
The depiction here is way too sensationalist and eye-roll-inducing. If we want to go there, how is this different from let's say.. a car (or a self-driving car), or even the idea of working for companies to sustain your daily life, especially in person. In any case, I think we can all agree that a mobile safety system like this should have some better industrial design than that diagram.