Amazon is building robots that do everything from moving individual shirts and bottles of soap to neatly stacking packages for the shipping dock. Amazon executives hope these robots will help the company avoid hiring hundreds of thousands of employees in the coming years.

Here’s a rundown of what Amazon is doing to automate its facilities, and previously unreported plans for what’s ahead.

How Amazon Got Its Start With Robotics

In 2012, Amazon bought the robot maker Kiva, which made squat, circular robots that could lift a stack of goods and take it to a worker.

Since then, Amazon has categorized all its operations into six types of automation: movement, manipulation, sorting, storage, identification and packing, the chief technologist at Amazon Robotics, Tye Brady, said in an interview last fall. “We want to have a world-class capability in each of those,” he said.

This approach tries to address a central tension in developing robotics, between creating a system that can do many things but is harder to develop and creating one that has a narrower focus but is more likely to succeed.

The company has developed robots that tackle particular challenges. That includes Greek-named updates to Kiva, like Hercules, which moves heavy carts, and Pegasus, which shuttles and sorts packed orders. There is also a flock of robotic arms, including Robin and Sparrow, that manipulate items and packages.