Brief: ESA plans Surface Avatar lunar remote robot experiment next year; Amazon opens multi-story robotic fulfillment center in Czech Republic, and more

A research team led by ESA and the German Aerospace Center plans to conduct the first large-scale space robotics trial of the Surface Avatar project in 2023, studying how astronauts use multimodal interfaces such as voice, gestures, and eye tracking to remotely control a team of robots performing collaborative tasks on a planetary surface. Amazon opened its second and first multi-story robotic fulfillment center in the Czech Republic, in the city of Mošnov, with an investment of over 5 billion Czech korunas and a total area of more than 187,000 square meters; it is planned to be fully operational in 2023 and bring up to 2,000 jobs.