Geek+ P-series robots handle storage shelving then queue and present items for picking to humans. | Credit: Geek+

Geek+ recently announced its combined worldwide fleet of P-series goods-to-person (GTP) workflow robots picked ten billion items over the past year. The GTP picking solutions deployed around the world covered over 175 million km during the period, according to the company, which is further than the distance from the Earth to the sun.

Yong Zheng, Founder and CEO of Geek+, said: “We are very proud of what we have achieved recently. The amount of merchandise that our robots have handled, coupled with the savings in time and energy, demonstrate that mobile robots are a technology for today’s problems and a brighter future.”

Each day, the number of items managed by Geek+ GTP robots and warehouse management systems reached as much as 750 million, according to the company.

This is a significant milestone for a fleet of robots. In researching this claim, we reached out to the company to inquire about the deployed number of GTP robots used to reach this milestone.

In the U.S., Geek+ said it has deployed more than 4,000 robots in 24 locations since 2019. Worldwide, the company said it has deployed an additional 26,000 robots for a total worldwide fleet of 30,000 robots. We used that final figure in the calculation of this milestone.

With all of the data in hand, each robot needed to pick an average of 1.5 items per minute and drive at an average speed of 440 mm/sec (well within the technical and operating specifications of the robots).

The table below contains output from the spreadsheet that we generated to validate these claims. A company representative stated that the formula for calculating the items picked number was calculated using the average tasks picked per hour * average pieces per task * 10 working hours per day * operating robot * operating period.

Table 1 – Calculations for Geek+ robots (initial conditions in bold)

*data provided by Geek+

Over the past year, Geek+ has added new projects and expanded its collaboration with existing clients while continuing to evolve the complete solution. The company optimized Geek+’s warehouse management systems to boost robot efficiency by 15%. Geek+ said it plans to continue to improve and enhance its technology and expects further gains in sustainability and efficiency in 2023.

In 2022, Geek+ secured partnerships to expand into Canada and Brazil. Also, Geek+ has expanded its operations by adding a 1400m2 experience center and two new offices in North America, with over 100 employees.

The post How Geek+ robots could’ve picked 10B items in a year appeared first on The Robot Report.

On the left, AutoStore’s ASRS, and on the right, Ocado’s ASRS. | Source: AutoStore, Ocado

Yesterday, the UK High Court ruled that AutoStore’s patents, which have been the subject of a patent infringement case against Ocado, were invalid, and that Ocado did not infringe upon them. Both AutoStore and Ocado operate automated storage and retrieval systems (ASRS) that operate on similar principles.

AutoStore filed the lawsuit in October 2020, when it asserted that Ocado infringed upon six of its patents. The European Patent Office invalidated two of these patents before judgment was made on the case, and two other patents were withdrawn by AutoStore before the hearing started. 

Judge Hacon invalidated the remaining two patents because AutoStore had disclosed its technology publically in a business deal with the Central Bank of Russia before the company filed its patents. Halcon ruled that even if the patents were valid, the Ocado Smart Platform (OSP) did not infringe on them. The judge also ruled that OSP didn’t infringe upon the patents that AutoStore chose to withdraw from the case. 

An Ocado spokesperson said, “As we have said consistently since the day the action was launched that we did not infringe any valid AutoStore patents. Once again a judge has proved we are right. And we have been proved right by courts both in the US and the UK. Autostore’s decision to sue us has been a complete waste of time – for us and them – and will now also be a further waste of money for them as we intend to seek a significant costs order against them.”

“This entire misguided exercise by AutoStore has simply served to show that it is Ocado that is the innovation factory with robust processes in place to protect and respect IP. Our fulfillment centers can freely operate in light of this judgment. And although AutoStore presented this litigation to the market as a one-way bet – either they would win or “the status quo would be maintained”, the actual outcome of the litigation is that a significant number of their patent assets are being invalidated, their patent portfolio has been reduced and their IP has been weakened. Actions continue against AutoStore in Germany and the US for infringement of Ocado IP rights. The risk of infringement is now with AutoStore.”

In December 2021, AutoStore lost a similar patent infringement lawsuit filed with the International Trade Commission (ITC). US ITC Judge Charles Bullock ruled three of AutoStore’s patents involved in the case were invalid, and that Ocado didn’t infringe upon the fourth patent in the trial. 

The ASRS systems from both companies operate on similar storage and retrieval principles. Items are stored in bins stacked in a grid and retrieved by mobile robots from above the stack.

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Here’s a recap, in no particular order, of some of the best robots at ProMat 2023. 

Agility Robotics’ Digit

The Agility Robotics booth was packed for most of the show, and for good reason. It’s not every day you get the opportunity to see a bipedal robot in action. According to Agility, Digit’s demo was based on a real customer use case, and it was running during all four days of the show. Digit was the winner of ProMat’s Best New Innovation Award.

Digit is the product of over two decades of research and development. While the company may have started its journey by looking at various use cases for a bipedal robot, anything from running into burning buildings to last-mile delivery, it honed its focus on automating a process that needs to be addressed that Digit can safely and reliably perform. 

Digit currently only works in enclosed spaces away from humans, and it will even shut down when human workers get too close. The robot can help reduce worker injuries from lifting or lacerations that can happen when human workers handle broken totes. 

Agility is gearing up to start manufacturing Digit at scale, adding it could work at a rate of $10/hour for tasks like the one it demoed at ProMat. 

Boston Dynamics’ Stretch 

Boston Dynamics showed off its Stretch case handling robot at the show. Stretch showed off its trailer unloading abilities flawlessly, although there wasn’t much variability in the boxes it was working with. 

Stretch is already deployed at customer sites and has more customers lined up. Boston Dynamics seems to have even more ambitious plans for the robot in the future. At its booth, it ran a video where it showed animated Stretch robots zipping around a warehouse, building pallets on top of AMRs which bring those pallets to other Stretch robots that would load the boxes into a truck. 

The company is being held back by safety regulations right now, which keep Stretch caged off and away from humans, limiting it to just its current unloading application.

Pickle Robot demoed a similar container unloading system. It is built around a modified Kuka arm and suction grippers to pick up objects up to 65 pounds and place them onto a conveyor. The onboard vision system determines which box to pick next. Again, there wasn’t much variety in the shape and size of the boxes. Here’s a side-by-side comparison of the Pickle and Boston Dynamics solutions:

RightHand Robotics’s RightPick

RightHand Robotics wasn’t the only company showing off bin-picking robots, but its demo was one of the most consistent and flexible. The entire time I was at its booth, and every time I visited it throughout the show, RightPick didn’t miss a single pick. 

RightHand also showed a new autonomous suction cup swapper. Integrated in the front of a demo workcell, the robot arm can choose from four different suction cups. Due to all the data RightHand has collected over the years, it knows which suction cup offers the best chance at successfully picking an item. When the system has low confidence in a suction cup’s ability to grasp upcoming items, it will autonomously swap out for the suction cup that offers the most confidence. RightPick’s grippers use a combination of suction and three mechanical fingers to give the system extra stability in all of its picks. 

Brightpick’s Autopicker

Autopicker was announced in February 2023, and it was exciting to see it at work in person for the first time. Brightpick’s Autopicker moves around warehouses, retrieving totes from shelving and robotically picking items from those totes to consolidate orders directly in aisles. This process removes the need for a human picker to take items out of totes, a common part of many similar robotic systems.

At ProMat, Autopicker was picking snacks for attendees. At the show, it was only pulling totes from one side of the robot. But the version that will work in customer warehouses can pull from both sides, allowing it to roll between shelving and switch between pulling totes from behind or in front of the robot. 

Mujin’s TruckBot

Truck unloading was a popular demo at ProMat, and Mujin took a more unique approach to the process. According to the company, the robot can unload up to 1,000 cases per hour.

TruckBot’s design aims to specifically address the challenges that come specifically with unloading floor-loaded trailers and containers. The robot can attach to standard telescoping conveyors, which are found at many loading docks, and can reach up to 52 feet into a trailer truck or shipping container.

At ProMat, TruckBot was working with Mujin’s palletizing robot to sort cases onto pallets for storage. 

Tuskrobots’ autonomous pallet handler

Autonomous forklifts were another common appearance at the show, but Tuskrobots had the most unique approach to moving pallets. Instead of the typical automated forklift design, Tuskrobots’ autonomous pallet handler slides two prongs underneath a pallet and uses the tongs to lift the pallet. The rest of the AMR then slides underneath the pallet. 

Once the pallet is on top of the AMR, it can drive to its next location, where it lifts it again, slides out from underneath the pallet, lowers the pallet, and then slides its prongs back into the AMR. This unique method of picking up pallets means the robot is only slightly larger than its payload, allowing it to operate in high-density storage areas. 

Verve Motion’s SafeLift Suit

Verve Motion spun out of Harvard in 2020 and offers an exosuit that aims to take 40% of the strain off of workers during lifting. While the exosuit can improve productivity by helping workers keep a consistent pace during their entire shift, the company’s aim is to make workplaces safer for workers and to reduce on-the-job injuries. 

When we were at the booth, Home Depot was demoing the system, repeatedly lifting a packed tote and case of water. The retailer said they have employees who repeatedly lift loads up to 75 lbs from the floor onto a pallet daily. 

I had the opportunity to try out the exosuit myself. It took just minutes to put on and was easy to adjust. When picking up and putting down a heavy tote, it gives a tug across the back that reduces the amount of strain your back has to do. The suit at ProMat had three settings: neutral setting, lifting only and lifting and putting down. Users can switch between the modes by pressing a button near their shoulder. These settings can be customized according to a customer’s need. 

Slip Robotics AMR

Slip Robotics showcased its automated trailer loading/unloading system (ATLS). The omnidirectional robot is designed to carry up to 8 full pallets and a total of 6 tons. It autonomously drives into a tractor-trailer for transport to the next destination. Three ATLS robots can fit inside a typical tractor-trailer.

Fork truck operators do not need to enter the trailer and instead load and unload pallets onto the Slip ATLS in the open loading dock. The Slip ATLS travels with the load to the destination, where it drives off the trailer, onto the dock for unloading and loading. A loaded set of ATLS robots would then drive onto the trailer for immediate departure. Slip said its robots use a sealed lead acid battery that isn’t subject to federal hazmat restrictions for ground transport.

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Editors from The Robot Report attended the 2023 ProMat event in Chicago. In episode 109 of The Robot Report Podcast, co-hosts Steve Crowe and Mike Oitzman discuss the news and stories from the event. Also in this week’s episode, Mike highlights news related to the future of AI and robotics from the recent Nvidia GTC event.

ProMat 2023 Review

New robotics companies at the show included:

• Mushiny
• Multiway Robotics
• Quiktron
• SEER
• Tuskrobots
• Slip Robotics
• Pickle Robots

The most interesting robotics solutions at the show:

• Autonomous forklifts were everywhere on the show floor
• Agility Robotics demoed the latest iteration of Digit robot
• RightHand Robotics’ demoed a new suction cup switcher
• Boston Dynamics Stretch trailer unloading demo worked well
• Slip robotics had a new, novel trailer-loading/unloading AMR-based solution
• Locus One Interoperability was a key new feature of LocusOne software
• Verve Motion exosuit is a solution to warehouse worker fatigue

For a complete summary of our editor’s picks for robotics at ProMat 2023, check out this story.

Robotics Summit & Expo (May 10-11) returns to Boston

NVIDIA news this week:

• Omniverse Cloud for enterprises is now available as a platform as a service (PaaS) for compute-intensive workloads like synthetic data generation.
• Issac ROS DP3 release adds new perception capabilities and open-source modules
• New LIDAR-based grid localizer package
• New people detection support in the NVBLOX package
• GPU-accelerated 3D reconstruction for collision avoidance
• Updated VSLAM and depth perception GEM
• Source release of NITROS, NVIDIAs ROS 2 hardware acceleration implementation
• New Isaac ROS benchmark suite built
• The Robot Report story on Nvidia GTC
• NOTEWORTHY: Fireside chat between Jenson and Ilya Sutskever, Co-founder and Chief Scientist, OpenAI (Nvidia GTC site)

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Data science-driven platform seamlessly orchestrates large fleets of multiple robot form factors in very large warehouses to deliver predictable, efficient, and scalable productivity results. | Credit: Locus Robotics

Locus Robotics announces LocusONE, a seamless warehouse management solution that enables the operation and management of large quantities of multiple AMR form factors as a single, coordinated fleet in all sizes of warehouses. LocusONE uses proprietary data science to support the full breadth of material movement needs in today’s fulfillment and distribution warehouses.

“LocusONE makes it easy to deploy and manage large numbers of AMRs — and multiple form factors — within very large warehouses to work together as a single, orchestrated fleet,” said Rick Faulk, CEO of Locus Robotics. “Based on Locus’s proprietary data science engine, LocusONE enables operators to gain the flexibility and critical business intelligence needed to efficiently handle material payloads from 3 ounces to 3,000 pounds.”

The LocusONE platform supports a thousand or more robots, operating in sites as large as one million square feet or more, executing multiple use cases simultaneously in a single, intelligent, and orchestrated solution. With LocusONE, LocusBots engage in various tasks — including each picking and putaway, case picking and putaway, replenishment, pallet building, routine routes, point-to-point transport, counting, and more — within a single warehouse. The data science behind the scenes optimizes the mix of tasks throughout the day to achieve optimal warehouse productivity.

LocusONE integrates with any WMS system to provide flexible and dynamic fleet management and enables easy deployment of a mix of Locus Origin, Vector, and Max AMRs tailored to meet each warehouse’s specific needs. Regular enhancements are released as over-the-air updates to Locus’s installed base of more than 250 customer sites.

“Locus lets DHL Supply Chain deploy the right bot for our customers’ varied needs, all centrally coordinated and managed on one platform. With Locus’s powerful data science strategy, delivered through the LocusView dashboards, LocusONE plays an important role in providing the key business intelligence insight we need to optimize operational efficiency and improve service quality for our customers,” said Sally Miller, CIO North America & DSC Digital Transformation Officer of DHL Supply Chain North America. “Partnering with Locus has helped us deliver on our commitment to continuous innovation and digital transformation across the entire supply chain”.

Locus’s powerful data science foundation makes it possible to smoothly navigate hundreds – or even a thousand or more – bots in a single footprint as well as deliver predictive and actionable management guidance – in real time – to dramatically improve throughput across a multitude of use cases. LocusONE includes Locus’s award-winning LocusView package, which delivers data-driven, actionable insights across more than two dozen insightful reports and real-time dashboards, including labor guidance, predictive insights for work completion, operational comparisons against targets or time periods, order pool tracking and guidance, mission analysis and optimization, key performance visualization, and more.

LocusONE further extends Locus’s position as the industry’s AMR leader for automation and digitalization of warehouses, distribution, and fulfillment centers to efficiently meet increasing order volumes, labor shortages, and rising consumer expectations.

“As warehouses become increasingly complex, the ability to rely on a dependable data analytics strategy is essential to their smooth operation. Having the ability to deploy a flexible, seamless and proven AMR management platform to meet a broad range of use cases has become a must-have in the warehouse fulfillment industry,” said Ash Sharma, Senior Research Director at Interact Analysis. “This innovative platform demonstrates how critical multi-form factor interoperability is in today’s fulfillment warehouse and reflects Locus Robotics’ commitment to innovation, ease of use, and broad industry vision over the past few years.”

“LocusONE’s ability to integrate rapidly and efficiently with other automation technology – such as sortation or packaging systems – ensures that a nimble, scalable robotics solution can be easily deployed into both brownfield and greenfield environments,” noted Faulk.

“The LocusONE platform enables Kenco to create a seamless fulfillment experience that delivers enhanced productivity while improving employee morale and visibility. We rely on the LocusView dashboards to monitor progress and inform our labor management throughout the day,” said Kristi Montgomery, Vice President, Innovation, Research & Development Kenco Logistics. “LocusONE’s real-time insights allow us to delight our customers, and that’s what matters most to Kenco.”

LocusONE is available through the company’s all-inclusive, Robots-as-a-Service (RaaS) business model. Locus Origin, Vector, and Max can be easily added to existing and new workflows, enabling operations to dynamically scale and adapt to changing market demands. In a study done by Peerless Research Group, nearly half of the respondents said they would prefer to buy their robotics solution as an entire integrated system that includes hardware, software, support, and maintenance.

Locus’s Recycle, Refurbish, and Repurpose initiative is designed to drive sustainability actively across all aspects of the business — from manufacturing and deployment to support and maintenance — at sites around the world. Locus is continually working to identify and implement best-practice strategies and tactics designed to reduce overall waste across all areas of our organization.

Locus will be showcasing LocusONE at Promat, Booth #S2303, the material handling industry’s premier event, running March 20-23 in Chicago, IL, where the Locus theme will be Vision, Intelligence, Results – emphasizing Locus’s commitment to delivering actionable intelligence in an innovative solution to drive results for customers. Locus will also host guests at the Locus Theater, featuring a lineup of informative industry speakers and presentations, discussions with Locus’s customers and partners, as well as showcasing live picking and putaway demos.

The post Locus Robotics introduces LocusONE multi-bot warehouse management appeared first on The Robot Report.

Slip Robotics demonstrated its automated trailer loading/unloading system (ATLS) at ProMat 2023. The omnidirectional robot is designed to carry up to 8 full pallets and a total of 6 tons. It is capable of autonomously driving into a tractor-trailer for transport to the next destination. Three ATLS robots can fit inside a typical tractor-trailer.

Fork truck operators do not need to enter the trailer and instead load and unload pallets onto the Slip ATLS in the open loading dock. The best part of the optimization with Slip AMR is that driver waiting time can be reduced from 1.5 hours down to 5 minutes.

The Slip ATLS travels with the load to the destination, where it drives off the trailer, onto the dock for unloading and loading. A loaded set of ATLS robots would then drive onto the trailer for immediate departure.

The business model for Slip is that a logistics company would have a set (of three) ATLS robots for each loading bay on their loading dock. The ATLS robots would swap out as each new trailer arrives. Then the dock staff would unload the full pallets and reload the ATLS with the next trailer load of pallets.

If you are visiting ProMat, check out the Slip Robotics at Booth # N6739.

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Agility Robotics is unveiling at ProMat the next generation of its Digit humanoid. Most humanoids to date have been designed for research labs. Digit, on the other hand, is being built specifically to carry out tasks in warehouses and distribution centers. It’s starting by targeting bulk material handling tasks such as tote movement.

At ProMat, the Digit humanoid will carry out tasks autonomously in a replica warehouse in Agility’s booth. The Robot Report is attending ProMat.

Digit stands about 5 feet 9 inches tall and weighs about 140 lb. Updates in the next generation include newly designed end effectors optimized for reaching high/low, pulling, picking up, and placing objects commonly found in e-commerce and shipping warehouses, like plastic totes. Digit also has a new head with LED animated eyes, which allow for improved human-robot interaction such as using simple expressions to convey information and intent. For example, the new Digit uses body language and eye movement to indicate which direction it is about to turn.

Other new features include upgraded sensors and cameras, increased battery capacity, longer run time, improved rate of charging, and a new charging dock.

Agility is also opening up applications for a limited number of spots in the Agility Partner Program (APP). The APP will provide partners with an opportunity to shape the development of Digit’s skills. Agility said it expects to deliver the first beta robots to customers in this program in early 2024. The company expects the humanoid to be generally available in 2025.

Next-gen Digit humanoid. | Credit: Agility Robotics

“Three years ago, we introduced the first commercially available bipedal robot with a human form factor made for work. Since then, we have seen enormous interest in Digit from multinational logistics companies, and have worked closely with them to understand how they want to use Digit to improve warehouse and supply chain operations. We designed the next generation of Digit with those customer use cases in mind,” said Damion Shelton, co-founder and CEO of Agility Robotics.

Jonathan Hurst, CTO and co-founder of Agility Robotics, is also a professor of robotics at Oregon State University’s College of Engineering. His lab created ATRIAS, a research robot that was one of the first robots to reproduce human walking gait dynamics. Agility spun out of Oregon State University in 2015 to commercialize this research. Agility first launched the Cassie bipedal robot, which was then followed up by earlier versions of Digit.

In April 2022, Agility raised $150 million in Series B financing. DCVC and Playground Global led the funding round, which also included participation from the Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund.

“We’ve learned so much about how robots can partner with the human workforce and work naturally in human environments, and we can’t wait to see the positive impact that the new Digit will have in the world,” said Hurst. “When people and robots work together in logistics operations, working conditions improve for people, warehouse efficiency improves overall, the supply chain moves more smoothly – everybody wins.”

“Supply chains are still feeling the after-effects of the pandemic, and the demand for warehouse labor far exceeds available talent. Companies are turning to automation now more than ever to help mitigate future disruptions. With logistics labor issues such as high turnover, burnout, and injury continuing to rise, we believe Digit to be the future of work,” continued Shelton. “We look forward to Digit augmenting workforces, taking on the ‘dull, dirty, and dangerous’ tasks, and allowing people to focus on more creative and complex work. We like to think of Digit as enabling humans to be more human.”

Are humanoids gaining momentum?

Building a humanoid that can do anything reliably, including balancing and walking, is extremely difficult. But several companies think the enabling technologies have improved so much in the last 10 years that building a general-purpose humanoid might now be possible.

Tesla is certainly the most high-profile of the bunch with its Optimus humanoid. Tesla has at least shown a real-life version of Optimus, whereas a startup that just emerged from stealth, Figure, has only shown renderings of its humanoid. Apptronik is also developing a humanoid and will be talking about its approach at the upcoming Robotics Summit & Expo, which runs May 10-11 in Boston.

Of course, Boston Dynamics still has Atlas. It’s far and away the most impressive humanoid ever built. And, yes, it’s real. I’ve seen the parkour routine in person. Boston Dynamics has been clear throughout Atlas’ development that its humanoid is purely for R&D purposes. And although it recently unveiled a video of Atlas “working” at a mock construction site, it said humanoids that can routinely tackle dirty and dangerous jobs in the real world are a “long way off.”

With all this momentum around humanoids, perhaps we’ll soon find out who’s right.

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Ambi Robotics is deploying its parcel-sorting robots at OSM Worldwide’s warehouses in the U.S. Based on the minimum four-year robots-as-a-service (RAAS) deal, the flagship AmbiSort A-Series system will be installed at OSM warehouses in Atlanta, Chicago, and Las Vegas.

The AmbiSort A-Series is a configurable robotic sorting system that uses machine learning to adapt to mixed parcels like polybags, flats and boxes into last-mile mailsacks. The systems are modular and configurable to accept parcels via rolling bin or the new conveyor-fed automated induction system.

AmbiSort is powered by AmbiOS, the company’s proprietary operating system that leverages simulation-to-reality (Sim2Real) artificial intelligence (AI). AmbiOS is based on The Dexterity Network (Dex-Net) project that was developed at UC Berkeley to automate the training of deep neural networks to improve a robot’s ability to grasp various items. Many of Dex-Net’s developers are now working at Ambi Robotics.

According to Ambi Robotics, AmbiSort systems are first designed and trained in simulation, which speeds up training 10,000x faster than teaching algorithms in the physical world.

“At OSM Worldwide, we are always looking for ways to improve our sorting and delivery operations, and we’re excited to partner with Ambi Robotics to empower our workforce with cutting-edge technology across our warehouses,” said James Kelley, president at OSM Worldwide. “With the AmbiSort A-Series systems, we can improve order accuracy and speed to our ecommerce customers while improving efficiency and safety for our warehouse employees amid rising parcel demand.”

Ambi Robotics’ AmbiSort parcel sortation system. | Credit: Ambi Robotics

Ambi Robotics raised a $32 million funding round in October 2022. The company has now raised about $67 million since it was founded in 2018. It closed a $26 million Series A in September 2021.

Ambi said it deployed an additional 60 robots to its U.S. customer base in under 60 days ahead of the 2022 peak holiday season. It said its robotic sorting systems are being used in more than 13 cities across the U.S. Pitney Bowes, a global shipping and mailing company, is another high-profile customer for Ambi. The company’s recently signed a $23 million expansion deal that would bring AmbiSort systems to additional warehouse locations.

Jeff Mahler, co-founder and CTO of Ambi Robotics, will be speaking at the Robotics Summit & Expo, which takes place May 10-11 in Boston. Mahler will be on the panel “Innovation in Robotic Grasping” to discuss emerging approaches to robotic manipulation, including the work being done at Ambi.

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Breaking news today regarding the failure and collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, one of the oldest banks in Silicon Valley to be used by generations of technology startups. Steve Crowe and Mike Oitzman discuss the situation and the likely fallout and impact to robotics companies and the venture capital industry that supports them.

Also on the show today we (unrelatedly) interview Rylan Hamilton, cofounder and CEO of 6 River Systems. Mike had the opportunity to sit down with Rylan and talk about Rylan’s start in robotics with Kiva Systems and how he concepted and built 6 River Systems into a leading AMR manufacturer that’s now a major part of the Shopify family.

It’s a great interview about the importance of putting the customer first and starting with a problem, rather than a solution.

Links from today’s show:

• Silicon Valley Bank collapse live blog (Bloomberg)
• Plus One Robotics raises $50M Series C funding round
• John Deere acquires SparkAI’s human-in-the-loop tech
• Michael Kohen, founder and CEO of SparkAI on the podcast in episode 91
• 6 River Systems website

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Plus One Robotics, a provider of advanced AI vision software and solutions for robotic parcel handling, announced that it has raised $50 million in Series C funding. The round was led by Scale Venture Partners, with Partner Rory O’Driscoll joining the board of directors. Top Tier Capital Partners, Tyche Partners, ROBO Global Ventures, Translink, McRock, and Pritzker Group Venture Capital also participated in the round alongside existing investors which brings the company’s total funding to date to nearly $100 million.

This $50 million funding round comes less than 2 months after Plus One Robotics laid off about 10% of its staff.

With these new funds, Plus One expects to further increase its capacity and rapidly scale deployment, as well as expand its sales and marketing efforts in North America and internationally. This expansion builds on Plus One Robotics’ existing relationships with customers in the parcel post, logistics, and general merchandise industries, serving customers that include FedEx, MSC Industrial, and many more.

The labor problem

“The labor shortage is hitting the shipping industry hard, and parcel picking is an often overlooked yet essential part of the process,” said Scale Partner Rory O’Driscoll. “By automating the parcel handling piece, Plus One Robotics is rapidly modernizing an outdated system that’s no longer sustainable. It is stepping up and leading the way in a $128 billion market, with fundamentals that prove its value.”

E-commerce has grown to represent 19% of U.S. retail sales, with approximately 20 billion parcels delivered in the U.S. in 2021. Shipping growth is expected to rise by 25% over the next five years resulting in warehouses and distribution centers not having the workforce to keep up.

On the supply side, over 80% of warehouses are manual, and with the demands placed on shipping expected to grow, there will be over 1 million more jobs to fill by 2025 despite the shrinking of available labor sources – and costs are rising. Labor costs average $25 per hour and continue to increase. This creates a perfect storm threatening the supply chain and impeding future e-commerce growth.

“The growth of e-commerce has placed tremendous pressure on shipping responsiveness and scalability that has significantly exacerbated labor and capacity issues,” said Erik Nieves, CEO and co-founder of Plus One Robotics. “Automation is key, but keeping a human in the loop is essential to running a business 24/7 with greater speed and fewer errors. With the ongoing labor shortages, I believe we’ll see an increase in the adoption of Robots-as-a-Service (RaaS) to lower capital expenditures and deploy automation on a subscription basis. This new funding will help us scale up and meet the need for these solutions.”

Key to Plus One Robotics’ effectiveness is its human-in-the-loop software. Employees, remote or on-premises, can supervise multiple robots from any location, speeding the robot’s ability to handle exceptions, and enabling 24/7 operations. Users benefit from improved sorting and picking throughput by >30% while decreasing operational costs.

Plus One said it has experienced nearly three times year-over-year growth from expanded business with existing customers and new deployments. Additionally, it has increased its adoption of the human-in-the-loop capability and RaaS offering among its parcel and post, third-party logistics (3PL), and general merchandise customers.

Plus One said its deployments perform over one million parcel picks each day in production.

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Third Wave Automation (TWA) announced that it brought in a strategic investment from Qualcomm Ventures and Zebra Technologies. The latest investment brings the company’s total funding since it was founded in 2018 to $70 million. 

TWA brought in $15 million in 2020 as its Series A round and raised another $40 million in 2021, meaning this investment could be for up to $15 million. 

This investment will help TWA invest in new products, as its autonomous forklift product, Third Wave Automation Reach, expands its select pilot programs. TWA Reach is a fully automated reach truck that can handle any pallet or payload from the warehouse floor to the rack. The system uses TWA’s core automation technology and collaborative autonomy platform which enables remote operation and assistance, intelligent fleet management and continuous learning capabilities. 

“After successfully deploying our solution with key pilot customers, we are excited to expand the TWA Reach pilot program. This enables us to explore additional automation workflows and continue deploying flexible forklift automation technology,” Arshan Poursohi, TWA’s co-founder and CEO, said. “With the strategic investment from Qualcomm Ventures and Zebra Technologies, we look forward to scaling production of our forktrucks, deploying them with new customers in a wide variety of sites, continuing to innovate with new applications and additional materials handling vehicles, and perfecting our fleet management.”

Robotics Summit (May 10-11) returns to Boston

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With the new funding, TWA hopes to expand its market offerings, accelerate new products for automating other classes of forklifts, like narrow aisle and counterbalance trucks, and integrate with other robotics products, like from Fetch Robotics, a subsidiary of Zebra Technologies and autonomous mobile robot (AMR) provider. 

“As our supply chain customers continue to battle labor shortages, they are turning to automation solutions to improve productivity. TWA’s autonomous, high-reach fork trucks streamline warehouse workflows, enabling operators to increase throughput and lower costs while also improving worker safety,” Tony Palcheck, managing director of Zebra Ventures at Zebra Technologies, said. “TWA’s approach aligns with Zebra’s goals, and we look forward to working with Arshan and the Third Wave team to improve material handling operations.”

TWA Reach was recently featured in The Robot Report’s “Best robots of CES 2023“. The article highlighted TWA Reach’s three operational modes: (1) manual; (2) remote operation; (3) fully autonomous operation.

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Brightpick, a provider of warehouse automation systems, announced Autopicker, an autonomous mobile picking robot for e-commerce and grocery order fulfillment. 

Autopickers move around warehouses, retrieving product store totes from shelving and robotically picking items from those totes to consolidate orders directly in aisles. Many autonomous storage systems involve robots that bring totes to human pickers, who then take out the items needed for an order, but Autopicker is able to pick these items directly. 

If an item is too complex for the robot to pick, it will bring it to the nearest human to allow them to complete the pick instead. 

The system takes less than a month to deploy, and allows warehouses to reduce their picking labor by up to 95%. A typical system can consist of anywhere from 15 to 100 robots, whose fleet and fulfillment processes are orchestrated and optimized by Brightpick Intuition software. 

Deployment is so quick because Autopicker works with standard warehouse shelving and totes, unlike other systems that require specific infrastructure for the robots to work in. The Brightpick system can help companies increase storage density in warehouses by 250% while still using standard 10 ft high shelving. With multiple levels, storage density can be even higher. 

Autopicker can reliably pick groceries, cosmetics, personal care products, electronics, pharmaceuticals, apparel and more with 99.9% accuracy, according to Brightpick. Its AI algorithms have been trained on more than 250 million picks to date, and are improving with each pick using machine learning. 

The system is available under two different purchasing methods, the first is a Robots-as-a-Service (RaaS) model, which allows customers to automate with lower overhead costs, and the second is a capex model, which allows customers to purchase the robots outright. 

Just last month, Brightpick announced that it brought in $19 million in funding, bringing Photoneo Brightpick Group’s Series B round to a total of $40 million. The company plans to use the latest round of funding to further expand into the US. This round brings Photoneo Brightpick Group’s total funding to date to $53 million. 

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Boston Dynamics is officially putting its Stretch robot into the hand of its customers. Its first commercial application is with DHL Supply Chain, a company that Boston Dynamics has been collaborating with since 2018, when it began developing Stretch.

DHL Supply Chain was Boston Dynamics’ first Stretch customer back in January 2022, when the company announced a $15 million deal with Boston Dynamics, and now a year later, we have a look at those robots being put to work in DHL warehouses. 

In a video released by Boston Dynamics this morning, we see Stretch using its suction gripper to unload boxes from a shipping container and onto a flexible or telescopic conveyor belt that brings the packages to DHL employees for processing. 

Once Stretch is set to start unloading, it does the work on its own without any interruption needed from DHL staff.  Even when Stretch drops a package, it readjusts its methods and picks it back up again.

Robotics Summit & Expo (May 10-11) returns to Boston

With a six and a half foot extended reach and 10-foot vertical reach, Stretch is able to grab packages from all different corners of shipping containers without needing any information about how the container was loaded, or prior knowledge about the individual packages themselves. 

Stretch is the next generation of Handle, a robot Boston Dynamics introduced in 2017 that combined wheels and legs. While Stretch isn’t equipped with legs, it does have an omnidirectional mobile base with four independently controlled wheels. This means the robot can be moved into any space a pallet can fit into. 

Stretch comes with an 8-hour battery life, but there will be a 16-hour battery option and the ability to plug Stretch in for continuous power. Stretch uses the Pick vision system, which Boston Dynamics acquired when it bought Kinema Systems in April 2019. Pick uses high-resolution 2D and 3D vision and machine learning algorithms for robotic depalletizing. One of the main keys to success will be Stretch’s ability to handle a variety of boxes.

While this is Stretch’s first commercial deployment, DHL plans to gradually scale Stretch for more tasks across multiple facilities over the next few years. DHL is also hoping to integrate Stretch into its warehouse management system so the robot knows where to go and what to pick. 

DHL isn’t the only company interested in using the Stretch robot. NFI, a third-party logistics provider (3PL), announced in August 2022 it would be spending $10 million to deploy the robot across its U.S. warehousing operations. Initially, Stretch will unload trucks and containers as a pilot program at NFI’s Savannah, GA facility in 2023. Additional deployments will take place over the next few years.

Marc Raibert, executive director of the AI Institute, will be keynoting the Robotics Summit & Expo, to be held May 10-11, 2023 at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. Raibert’s fireside chat “The Next Decade in Robotics” will close the show and hit on some of the biggest technical hurdles still facing the industry. He will also discuss opportunities for the industry going forward, and what his new AI Institute is working on. Raibert is also Chairman of the Board at Boston Dynamics, which he founded in 1992.

Kevin Blankespoor, VP and GM of warehouse robotics at Boston Dynamics, joined The Robot Report Podcast when the company unveiled Stretch in March 2021. On the podcast, Blankespoor described the evolution of the product design, the many system integration challenges, plans to improve the Pick vision system going forward, similarities between Atlas, Spot and Stretch, and much more. You can listen to that interview below.

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Symbotic Inc., a developer of A.I.-enabled robotics technology for the supply chain, announced financial results for its first fiscal quarter that ended December 24, 2022.

Symbotic posted revenue of $206.3 million, a net loss of $68.0 million and an adjusted EBITDA loss of $16.3 million for the first quarter of fiscal year 2023. In the same quarter of fiscal year 2022, Symbotic had revenue of $77.1 million, a net loss of $23.1 million and an adjusted EBITDA loss of $21.3 million.

“Symbotic achieved triple-digit revenue growth and added to our base of outsourcing partners during the first quarter. We are optimistic about our outlook and are poised for continued strong growth. Demand for our solutions continues to grow and our backlog increased to $12.0 billion in the quarter,” Symbotic Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Rick Cohen said.

Robotics Summit & Expo (May 10-11) returns to Boston

“In addition to our 168% annual revenue growth, gross margin improved and operating expenses, excluding stock-based compensation, declined sequentially,” Symbotic Chief Financial Officer Tom Ernst, said. “We initiated a record six system deployments during the first quarter as we continue to rapidly scale operations and deliver for our customers. Cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities on hand increased by $94.1 million from the prior quarter to $447.5 million, leaving us well capitalized to execute our growth strategy.”

Symbotic made its debut on the NASDAQ in June under ticker symbol “SYM” after completing its business combination with SVF Investment Corp. 3, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) sponsored by an affiliate of Softbank Investment Advisors. The combination was approved at a meeting of SVFC shareholders on June 3, 2022.  

Symbotic’s system includes a fleet of fully autonomous robots that receive, store and retrieve products in distribution centers. It utilizes hundreds of autonomous mobile robots called “Symbots”. 

Symbotic’s software is able to orchestrate an entire fleet of robots to receive, store and retrieve a virtually limitless number of SKUs, according to the company. Each robot is equipped with the company’s proprietary end-of-arm tooling and vision systems, which allow them to output cases, totes and packages at industry-leading speeds.

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Outrider’s autonomous yard trucks can automate operations in distribution yards. | Source: Outrider

Outrider, a developer of autonomous yard operations for logistics hubs, announced that it raised $73 million in Series C financing, bringing the company’s total funding raised to $191 million. 

The company plans to use the latest round of funding to expand its proprietary autonomy and safety technology portfolio, increase hiring both domestically and internationally and scale its yard automation solution with large customers. Outrider’s solution can be used for package shipping, retail, eCommerce, consumer packaged goods, grocery, manufacturing and intermodal industries. 

“Outrider has consistently delivered breakthrough technology to automate one of the most inefficient links in the supply chain – the distribution yard,” Andrew Smith, CEO and founder of Outrider, said. “Our customers will move massive quantities of freight more efficiently, safely, and sustainably using Outrider’s technology. We are thrilled to have an outstanding network of investors who share our vision to set a new standard for the global logistics industry.”

The Outrider System consists of three integrated parts — management software, autonomous vehicles, and site infrastructure. In addition to the articulated backing technology, the system can autonomously hitch to and unhitch from trailers, robotically connect and disconnect trailer brake lines, interact safely with loading docks, track trailer locations, and centrally manage and monitor all system functions.

In February 2022, Outrider released fully autonomous trailer backing capabilities to its fleet. The technology enables autonomous yard trucks to back trailers into tight spaces without modifications to trailers. According to Outrider, this is one of the most challenging maneuvers in confined distribution yards. 

Outrider’s Series C round was led by FM Capital, and included participation from a number of new investors, including a subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and NVenture, NVIDIA’s venture capital arm, B37 Ventures, Lineage Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of Lineage Logistics, Presidio Ventures, the venture capital arm of Sumitomo Corporation, and ROBO Global Ventures. 

“Outrider has addressed all the pieces –  technology, safety, operations, and support – needed to deploy a reliable, industrial-grade system at scale. The company is a case study in bringing advanced robotics and autonomy technology to market,” Mark Norman, Managing Partner of FM Capital, said. “Outrider has a world-class team to scale their solution and FM Capital is excited to invest and join the company’s Board of Directors.”

The round also included existing investors in the company, including Koch Disruptive Technologies and New Enterprise Associates. 

Additionally, Henrik Christensen, a founding member of ROBO Global’s Advisory Board and Qualcomm Chair of Robotics at UC San Diego, has joined Outrider as a board advisor. 

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