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Kiva Systems
Filling the void left by Kiva Systems’ 2012 acquisition by Amazon
Frank Tobe
14 Apr 2016
In March 2012, in an effort to make their distribution centers (DCs) as efficient as possible, Amazon acquired Kiva Systems for $775 million and almost immediately took them in house.
There was c...
Meet the drone that already delivers your packages, Kiva robot teardown
Ben Einstein
01 Feb 2016
There’s been a lot of talk about package delivery via flying drones. While this is an interesting vision of the future, current economics make this an unlikely substitute for base-load ground delive...
While Amazon doubles its number of warehouse robots to 30K, competing systems emerge
Frank Tobe
02 Nov 2015
Amazon announced that at the end of September they had 30,000 Kiva robots at work in 13 fulfillment centers, effectively doubling the number of Kiva bots that it had in 2014. "Our intent is to use...
GreyOrange gets $30m for mobile robots
Frank Tobe
14 Aug 2015
GreyOrange, an India and Singapore-based materials handling startup, has received $30m in equity funding to ramp up production of their Butler shelves-to-picker robot system....
Competing robotic warehouse systems
Frank Tobe
01 May 2015
As sales via online retailers steadily increase, so too does the speed with which customers want their goods delivered. Amazon, eBay, and Google all have massive and speedy warehousing operations atte...
Dean Kamen, Raffaello D’Andrea RIA to receive 2015 Engelberger Robotics Awards | RIA
Hallie Siegel
09 Feb 2015
The robotics industry’s highest honor, the Engelberger Robotics Award, will be presented to Dean Kamen and Raffaello D’Andrea at a special ceremony on Monday, March 23, 2015 in Chicago, Illinois...
Raffaello D’Andrea on the future of robotics
Massimo Russo and The Boston Consulting Group (BCG)
28 Jan 2015
Raffaello D’Andrea’s robots can do amazing things: play soccer and ping-pong, perform complex choreographed acrobatics in the air, build towers brick by brick, and move pallets around warehouses. ...
Amazon Picking Challenge
Joe Romano
05 Nov 2014
In September 2014 Amazon announced the Amazon Picking Challenge, a new robot manipulation contest as part of the ICRA robot challenges. The idea was to take a difficult problem from the warehouse orde...
Amazon will be using 10,000 robots in its warehouses by the end of the year | CNN
Hallie Siegel
28 May 2014
CEO Jeff Bezos told investors at a shareholder meeting Wednesday that he expects to significantly increase the number of robots used to fulfill customer orders. There are currently about 1,000 robot w...
MODEX: How quickly things change
Frank Tobe
18 Mar 2014
At previous MODEX events - trade shows exhibiting the latest manufacturing and supply chain equipment and technologies - Kiva had their own boothes. Big boothes with lots of people marveling at their...
Academic and industry collaboration (Part 4): Interview with Raffaello D’Andrea
Florian Röhrbein
28 Feb 2014
In this 4th interview of our four-part ECHORD series, conducted last June, Sascha Griffiths from TUM talks to Raffaello D'Andrea, Professor of Dynamic Systems and Control at ETH Zurich and technical c...
The robots behind your Internet shopping addiction: How your wallet is driving retail automation
Erin Rapacki
25 Feb 2014
When you're shopping for the best online deals you're probably not thinking much about the massive distribution network required to bring that pair of shoes to your doorstep. Is your quest for the bes...
Big deals: What it means to have the giants investing in robotics
Hallie Siegel
12 Feb 2014
If the world outside the robotics community didn't know about Boston Dynamics, Kiva and Nest, they do now. Recent robotics acquisitions and investments by major-league players like Google, Apple a...
Forget the octocopter, let’s talk about Kiva
Shawn Milne and Michael Carroll
10 Dec 2013
Given all the chatter on drones and automation, we thought it would be a good time to dive deeper into the Kiva opportunity and potential impact on leverage/margins. For the sake of our analysis, we t...
Amid drone talk, Amazon has real robots | Wall Street Journal Blog
Hallie Siegel
09 Dec 2013
Amazon got a lot of ink for its sci-fi drone delivery idea this week, but a more real and immediate robot effort underway in the Seattle retailer’s warehouses could save it as much as $916 million a...
Kickstarter, Indiegogo and robotic start-up companies
Frank Tobe
24 Mar 2013
At last weekend's Engadget Expand event in Fort Mason, San Francisco, Kickstarter's co-founder Yancey Strickler started off the show with a presentation of many of Kickstarter's crowd-funding success...
Updated Robotics Roadmap presented to US congress
Frank Tobe
22 Mar 2013
Henrik Christensen, the KUKA Chair of Robotics at GA Tech and Chairman of the Roadmap project, Rodney Brooks, CEO of Rethink Robotics, Pete Wurman, CTO of Kiva Systems, and Russ Angold, CTO of Ekso Bi...
Filling a need… or feeding a diversion
Frank Tobe
02 Jan 2013
Today's robotics industry could use some strategic guidance,
particularly in the area of healthcare.
It is clear to me that the next big markets for robotics are:
SMEs (robot...
Robotics year in review: Top 10 stories of 2012
David Pietrocola
26 Dec 2012
The past year was a watershed moment for robotics. From defense to exploration, startups to legislation, we saw products, laws, and investments that have shifted robotics out of the lab and into our l...
Robot holiday season videos 2012 (continued)
Sabine Hauert
24 Dec 2012
Our colleagues at the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at EPFL just sent us a fun video of Santa riding a fixed-wing robot and loosing a present. Luckily, the present can autonomously find its way to...
Robot holiday season videos 2012 (continued)
Sabine Hauert
22 Dec 2012
More videos for the holiday season featuring robots have started to appear.
This time, General Motors and Kiva Systems feature high-tech robots pretending to be "Santa's little helpers"....
Distribution centers: An emerging robotics frontier
Frank Tobe
03 Oct 2012
Distribution centers (DCs) are massive warehouses that receive, inspect and store goods for later picking, packing and shipping to end-users, re-distributors or retail outlets. Products can be everyth...
First Kiva Systems and now Intelligrated! Who’s next?
Frank Tobe
09 Jun 2012
... What is it about automated robotic warehousing? Amazon just acquired Kiva Systems for $775 million and now Permira, a European private equity firm, announced that it was acquiring Intelligrated fo...
Why robot startups now? Part 2
Andra Keay
11 May 2012
2. Broader Financial Climate
A positive indicator for robotics startups is the improving financial climate. There are signs that the US housing market is stabilizing. Fannie Mae, the government bac...
Another big robot acquisition: Amazon buys Kiva Systems
Frank Tobe
19 Mar 2012
... Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) will acquire privately-held Kiva Systems for approximately $775 million!
... Kiva’s novel warehousing system uses robots to bring the shelves to the picker and packer in...
Kiva Systems presents a glimpse of future pick n’ pack fulfillment
Frank Tobe
24 Feb 2012
... At the recent Modex 2012 in Atlanta, Kiva Systems’ booth featured a fully-functioning warehouse operation where attendees walked up and placed their orders on an iPad and then picked their o...
Modex 2012: Robotic and smart technologies for handling material in factories and warehouses
Frank Tobe
15 Feb 2012
In the emerging world of service robotics, many markets are opening to robotics that were once only handled by industrial robot manufacturers. Safely unmanned, or working alongside human workers, in a...
Kiva Systems starts rental program
Frank Tobe
16 Jun 2011
... Good idea justs keeps getting better. Kiva Systems launches rental program to help businesses with high peak or seasonal demand....
