Source: U.S. Patent OfficeRetail juggernaut Amazon has just secured a patent with the U.S. Patent Office for wristbands that can track the hand movements of workers in the company's warehouses.

Published on January 30, one of the patents details how the wristbands — through a haptic feedback system — vibrate to steer the wearer's hand in the right direction, thereby ensuring that human workers fulfill more orders. Likewise, the technology is also meant to track products as they move throughout the warehouse.

Amazon, responding to concerns about this additional layer of worker surveillance, issued the following statement:

Source: U.S. Patent Office“Existing approaches for keeping track of where inventory items are stored...may require the inventory system worker to perform time consuming acts beyond placing the inventory item into an inventory bin and retrieving the inventory item from the inventory bid, such as pushing a button associated with the inventory bin or scanning a barcode associated with the inventory bin. Accordingly, improved approaches for keeping track of where an inventory item is stored are of interest.”