There was confusion after the acquisition whether Kiva would continue providing DCs with Kiva robots. Although Kiva said that they would continue selling their technology to other retailers it soon became clear that Amazon was taking all Kiva’s production and that, at some future date, Kiva would stop supporting their existing client base and focus entirely on Amazon – which happened in April 2015 when Amazon renamed Kiva to Amazon Robotics and encouraged prospective users of Kiva technology to let Amazon Robotics and Amazon Services provide fulfillment within Amazon warehouses using Amazon robots.

Consequently, there has been a scramble of new providers to fill the void left by Kiva’s technology, warehouse software systems and robots being removed from the marketplace. Many of these startups were showing their robotic systems at MODEX 2016 held at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta. MODEX is a big material handling equipment, technology and systems show with 850 exhibitors, 250,000 sq ft (23,225 sq mt) of expo space, 100 informational seminars and over 25,000 attendees.

Kiva’s robots and inventory management system were breakthrough technologies in 2011 and 2012 enabling items that were to be shipped to be brought to the packer near the truck door, instead of the more traditional method of the picker/packer going out into the warehouse, picking the goods, and returning to pack and ship them. At the time Kiva started operations, robotic picking was still a premature science. Consequently Kiva focused on managing the rest of the process: receiving, de-palletizing and storing items and bringing dynamically-stored shelves containing ordered items to the picker/packer to pick, pack and ship while the Kiva robot returned the shelves to the most appropriate area in a free-form dynamic warehouse and autonomously went off to bring the next shelf to another picker/packer.

Although vision systems and grasping technologies have improved since then, they still aren’t fast and flexible enough to replace humans so, instead, most new systems attempt to augment humans by reducing what they have to carry and the distances they have to travel to get the items that were ordered.

Source: Locus robotics

Fulfillment systems

• Iam Robotics, a Pittsburgh startup founded by a couple of CMU grads, is the only vendor that uses a robot arm to grip goods. It 3D scans and identifies items to be picked into a cloud library and then uses a mobile picking robot to go to and pick items, place them in a tote, and then place the completed tote on the nearest conveyor to a packing station.
• Locus Robotics, a Massachusetts-based company founded specifically in answer to the Kiva situation by a Kiva-using DC owner, uses a fleet of robots integrated into current warehouse management systems to provide robotic platforms to carry picked items to a conveyor or to the packing station thereby reducing human walking distances and improving overall picking efficiencies.
• 6 River Systems, a Massachusetts startup comprised of ex-Kiva execs, had a booth but wasn’t even showing a photo of their solution. VCs have seen the 6 River System, however, and value it highly: 6 River just got $6 million in financing from a group of VCs including iRobot.
• Fetch Robotics, a Silicon Valley startup that uses two different robots: one to pick and the other to assist workers as they pick by carrying the items and taking completed orders to the shipping station – autonomously.
• Magazino, a German startup that was not at MODEX, has a mobile picking system that has a retractable and rotatable column with a gripper system and a removable shelf. It is able to grasp rectangular objects from small softcovers to shoeboxes up to heavy cases. The robot stores items in its built-in shelf and delivers it to a shipping station.
• Grey Orange, an Indian startup that was also not at MODEX, has a system and product line strikingly similar to Kiva’s original offerings except that their robot is square and Kiva’s is round. GreyOrange has over 300 employees and its robots provide service to India’s e-commerce giants Flipkart, Jabong and Mahindra and has been signing distribution partners in Japan and throughout Asia and the Pacific.
• InVia Robotics, also not at MODEX, a Southern California startup with two robots very similar to Fetch Robotics’ except InVia’s method of picking is similar to Magazino’s. It grabs items and slides them onto a platform which then slides the item into a bin and, when the order is complete, slides it onto an autonomous mobile delivery robot.

Mobile platform systems

Mobile platform systems are designed to work across multiple environments – DCs, warehouses, factories – and are autonomous mobile platforms that can be fitted with special-purpose payloads such as for receiving, restocking, inventory, moving material from work cell to work cell, picking, supporting human pickers, packing and palletizing. Many vendors have provided AGVs, carts, lifts and tows, and have done so for many years. The older versions of these systems use markings, tapes, beacons, sensors and other things on the floors and ceilings to provide location information. Newer systems use the latest 3D vision systems, collision avoidance and mapping software to easily enable autonomous point-to-point navigation.

• Clearpath Robotics is offering 2 transporters: one for heavy loads of up to 3,300lbs and the other for light loads of up to 220lbs. Both can be fitted with a carrying cart, bin carrier or a plain flat plate, and both have an intuitive lighting system similar to white headlights in the front, red in the rear. Clearpath is an established provider of robotic utility vehicles for the military and academia and are taking that experience to provide solid mobility platforms for customers to do their own thing.
• MiR Mobile Industrial Robots, a Danish startup headed by Thomas Visti (who was VP at Universal Robots of collaborative robots fame), has begun to sell a small transport for logistics and healthcare. It operates as both a tug and/or a platform. It has 2 scanners and a 3D camera to make sure that it sees people and obstacles.

Next-gen AGVs: Vision guided robots

Seegrid calls today’s vision guided vehicles the next generation of AGVs. Many vendors have, for years, provided material handling AGVs used to tow carts and pallets around warehouses, hospitals and factories. They depend upon beacons or floor and wall markings for their navigation and are efficient but klutzy.

Erik Nieves, who previously headed US Yaskawa Motoman and is now in stealth mode with his startup Plus One Robotics, said:

“Perfecting perception and grasping have been major holdups – particularly for the applications that most factory and warehouse executives crave: autonomously loading and unloading trucks and containers, and ‘each picking’ (the automated means to handle and package goods). The development of these technologies has been hindered by the acquisition of Industrial Perception (IPI) by Google in 2013. IPI was at the forefront of clever AI combined with ranging sensors and cameras in being able to quickly identify, categorize and instruct the robot how best to grasp random objects. Since their acquisition, their technology is no longer visible to the market.”

Armed with lower-cost LiDARs and Kinnect-like infrared 3D camera systems, new players like Aethon and Seegrid entered the market with new capabilities – including being able to autonomously unload containers: vision guided robotic lifts, tugs and platforms.

• Aethon is a Pittsburgh-based provider of autonomous tugs used in hospitals and factories. Some of their AGVs (they have more than 400 in the field) have been outfitted for secure medication delivery, and all of their robots are assisted with their Cloud Command Center, a 24/7/365 remote monitoring service to get the tug out of whatever unplanned situation in which it finds itself.
• Seegrid, also based in Pittsburgh, has focused their vision guided kits and lifts on the distribution center marketplace (their main investor/partner is Giant Eagle, a large East Coast grocery chain supported by multiple distribution centers). Seegrid has also partnered with forklift manufacturer Raymond to integrate their vision guided system onto Raymond lifts. Most recently Seegrid unveiled a monitoring system likened to a subway platform display showing when the next train is coming, to provide awareness to approaching devices and also to provide human assistance when needed.
• Balyo, a French manufacturer of handling robots has recently partnered with Linde and Hyster Yale to integrate and provide their vision guided systems onto forklifts and tows manufacturered by Linde and Yale.

As an aside, Seegrid recently held a contest to acknowledge journalists covering the materials handling industry and they awarded The Robot Report third place at an Awards Celebration event held after hours at MODEX in Atlanta. First place went to John Hitch, a staff writer at New Equipment Digest; second place went to Bob Trebilcock, Exec Editor at Modern Materials Handling. Thanks very much.

If you enjoyed this article, you may also want to read:

• Meet the drone that already delivers your packages, Kiva robot teardown
• Alan Winfield on “What does it mean to have giants like Google, Apple and Amazon investing in robotics?”

See all the latest robotics news on Robohub, or sign up for our weekly newsletter.

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 delivery for the next 5–10 years. Flying delivery drones can make a compelling marketing tool or ultra-premium feature, but their current hype doesn’t mesh with immediate reality.

Meanwhile, the robotic systems powering warehouse distribution centers are an engineering marvel far more elegant than flying drones. Tens of thousands of mobile (ground-based) drones are already in operation and helping deliver your packages today. One of these systems was originally built by a Kiva Systems based in the Boston area. I was able to get my hands on an older generation, end-of-life Kiva bot and cracked open its bright orange shell to expose a brilliant piece of engineering; this post shares the fruits of Kiva’s hard work.

Background

Traditional distribution centers for companies like Amazon and Staples are powered by an army of people walking miles a day to pick items off shelves and plop them in a box. This process is expensive, inefficient, and error-prone. Before Kiva, the state of the art time-reducer was a bicycle.

After a stint at Webvan, Kiva founder Mick Mountz had a realization: if e-commerce distributors could move shelves to people rather than people to shelves, the pick-pack process would be massively more efficient. Mick teamed up with Pete Wurman and Raffaello D’Andrea in 2003 to found Kiva Systems to fundamentally change the way people and objects move in a warehouse.

The system Kiva developed comprises on 5 key components:

• Custom designed Kiva shelves (“pods”) that are mobile and highly flexible
• A grid of 2D QR codes implanted on the floor (known as “fiducials”)
• An intelligent pack station decked out with scales, lasers, and sensors
• Herculean orange robots that swiftly lift and move the pods around the floor
• And most important of all: a complex and robust software system tying everything together

While all these components are amazing in their own right (and necessary for the system to function), this post focuses on the bright orange bots droning around the warehouse floor.

Architecture + Mechanics

In principle, the Kiva bot is pretty simple. It slowly traverses the floor reading 2D QR/Datamatrix codes every 40″ and takes commands from it’s brain in the cloud before making any movements. When it gets to a pod, the bot uses a clever lift mechanism, spinning in place to raise a ball-screw that lifts the pod a few inches off the ground.

The robots may seem simple, but consider this: pods can weigh a thousand pounds, distribution centers have tens of thousands of pods, hundreds of robots, and dozens of pack stations. One tiny collision or a dropped pod can cause many thousands of dollars of damages. This is not your granddaddy’s robot.

Each side of the outer shell has an array of IR sensors and a pneumatic bumper for collision detection and avoidance. There is also a charging port (the Kiva bots self-dock when charging) and a series of status LEDs to signal the bot’s activity. The only other major feature is the X-shaped lifter which lifts the shelving pods off the ground. Each robot has three independent axes of motion: two drive wheels and a motor for the “lifter.” As the lifter motor spins, both drive wheels counter-rotate so the lifter appears stationary while the robot spins. This reduces the number of drive components and eliminates complex hydraulic or scissor lift mechanisms.

The lifter is topped off by one of several massive aluminum castings that make up the structural components of the robot. All castings are made from the same 319 general purpose alloy. Each part has a series of secondary machining operations to add referenceable surfaces and threaded holes. Many high-quality aluminum parts are made using the same process (including automotive engine blocks and hydraulic actuators).

On the left: peeking into the front shell (including IR sensor array, wireless module, lifter and lifter motor). On the right: top of the lifter and the battery bank as the rear shell comes off.

Each IR sensor has it’s own filter logic built-in and communicates over a serial bus. You can also see the wireless control module and the lifter motor and giant pinion gear. Towards the rear of the bot, there are four lead-acid batteries and high-amperage bus bars.

Both fairing halves are made from vacuum-formed ABS. There are a large number of features which can only be made by multiple secondary machining setups. Both the vacuum former and the CNC mill/router used to make these parts must be extremely large. This part is complex/expensive enough that I’d be surprised if later revisions of the Kiva bot aren’t injection molded.

Brilliant bump sensor is super reliable and cost-effective for outfitting a large curved surface.

Rather than building full-length bump sensors, which is notoriously difficult to do on curved surfaces like those on the front/back of the bot, Kiva engineers found a simple, cost effective solution. They utilized vinyl/rubber tubing and a simple pressure sensor so that as soon as a change in pressure is detected, the robot stops all movement. The black box in the right picture receives the pressure line and aggregates all the IR sensors to simplify the protocol and wiring to the main controller.

On the left: top view of ball screw and lifter pinion gear. In the middle: side view of lifter motor and gearbox. On the right: center view of the lifter ball screw with imaging module and programming cable inside.

The lifter mechanism uses a custom-designed ball screw (the single most complex and expensive component, more on that later) coupled to a standard nylon pinion gear and gearmotor (the same one used for all three axes of motion). The motor is built by Pittman (Ametek) and boasts 27 in-lbs of torque and stall power of almost 1Kw. The right-angle bi-directional gearbox is built by Brother in Japan and can handle 407 in-lbs of torque at 72rpm with a 25:1 reduction. This motor gearbox combo runs into the $1,000 range for a single set (likely much lower at volume). Holy drivetrain, Batman!

On the left: the underside of our bot, the main logic board is tucked away under that sheet steel panel. On the right: custom cast Kiva wheels likely designed for extreme durability on poured concrete floors.

Once the lifter and electronics have been removed, the bot can be flipped over to get a better look at the drivetrain. Here we see the same two motors and gearboxes paired with custom-designed cast Kiva wheels. Flanked on either end are two pairs of dual rollerblade-style 360 degree casters. This drivetrain setup supports zero radius turns.

Three sandcast aluminum parts make up the majority of the body and are joined with simple clevis pins to make a simple, passive double suspension action. They all use the same general purpose 319 alloy and are all post-machined after casting. Kiva engineers likely switched to low-pressure aluminum molding with permanent steel tools as production volume increased. Notice the cooling fins on the top of the front casting on the bottom right: the giant MOSFETs for the custom motor control circuits are resting against the backside of those fins for maximum thermal efficiency, a slick design decision.

On the left/center: clevis pins are used to simplify the suspension design. On the right: cast-in-place cooling fans opposite the motor controller FETS on the main logic board.

Electronics

Even though Kiva bots have nearly no decision-making authority (each move is controlled by servers in the cloud), movement of the bot while lifting and controlling thousands of pounds of merchandise requires some pretty serious electronics.

On the left: side view of the battery bus bars with the lifter mechanism in the foreground. In the center: top view of batteries and charging port. On the right: closeup of charging port.

The system is powered by four 12v 28Ah lead-acid batteries connected in series (for 48v DC). Two of the four batteries also have custom thermocouples installed under their mounting bracket to ensure they don’t overheat.

When the power is running low, bots take themselves offline and return home to a charging station. The design of the charging port allows a good amount of slop in the mating process. I can say from experience, watching one of these bots go home to charge is pretty cool.

On the left: top-facing imager inside the lifter ball screw. On the right: bottom-facing imager once imaging unit is removed.

Tucked inside the lifter mechanism is one of the key enablers of the Kiva system: a dual-camera imaging module. One camera looks down at the ground to recognize 2D barcodes on the warehouse floor. The other looks upwards at the bottom of every pod. Each has 6 on-board red LEDs for illumination and like the rest of the robot, everything is custom designed. Sandwiched between the two imagers is an image processing board sporting an ADI ADSP-BF548 Blackfin multimedia processor which is doing the Datamatrix detection and relaying results via high-speed serial.

On the left: main logic board installed with a plethora of connectors. In the center: logic board removed with CPU daughterboard in the top right corner. On the right: communications module and antennas.

Tying everything together is the main logic board. Motor control circuitry is powered by 48V DC from the batteries and a separate filtered rail powers the logic/communications/CPU. The 3 phase brushless motor drive electronics are fully custom, driven by a Lattice LFXP6C FPGA (hidden under the daughterboard). Each of the three driver circuits has a current sensor, 6 high-amp FETs in full-bridge configuration (and are cooled via the chassis), input for a motor’s rotary encoder, and the giant 4-pin connector.

The daughterboard aggregates system functions by coordinating the wireless module, imaging unit, e-stop, infrared/pressure sensors, power management, and the motor drivers. The MCU is a 32-bit Freescale MPC5123 with a 400MHz clock likely running PowerPC Linux (on bare metal). The two ethernet ports connect to the wireless module and firmware flashing/external hardline connection, but they’re switched by a Mircel KSZ8993.

The only off-the-shelf circuitry on the entire robot is the communications module: the Soekris Engineering Net4526 router which sports a single Winstron NeWeb CM9 wireless module in a dual-antenna configuration, connected to the main logic board via ethernet.

The Magic Component

While there are many fascinating and brilliantly executed aspects to this generation of Kiva bot, one subsystem takes the cake: the lifter mechanism. This part does the literal heavy lifting for the Kiva system. It must be able to support a thousand-pound load while raising and lowering them perfectly parallel to the ground: a perfect task for a ball screw. Most ball screws are an inch or two in diameter, this is 11″ and hollow.

The two case bearing surfaces are aluminum and just like the main chassis parts, require several secondary machining operations during fabrication. Both parts are coated with a Teflon-impregnated anodization which I’ve never seen before but does a great job of providing lubrication and rust resistance. The “ball nut” (what is really an inner race) houses an injection molded ball return mechanism which recycles the nylon/delrin ball bearings. The “screw” (which is really an outer race) interfaces with both ball bearings on the inside and the pinion gear on the outside during the actual rotation/lifting operation.

While it’s difficult to estimate the cost of the lifter assembly due to the complexity, my guess pegs the value somewhere in the $1,000-range based on the part size, post-processing, coating, durability requirements, and non-trivial assembly process.

Conclusion

It’s clear Kiva Systems employs some pretty fantastic hardware engineers, which is probably a big part of the reason Amazon acquired the company in 2012 for $775M. This article admittedly focuses entirely on the robot, which is just one small (and really freaking cool) part of the greater solution.

In the hardware startup world, we spend a lot of time thinking and talking about consumer robots in our daily lives. Robots that will cook our food, schedule our meetings, vacuum our floors etc. I’d argue that less-sexy robots like Kiva are already impacting our daily lives more than most of us know. As e-commerce continues to grow, technologies like Kiva will be a driving force in changing the dynamics of the warehouses and distribution centers that are so critical to satiating our desire for break-neck fulfillment. Kiva is one of the few companies that masterfully integrates complex hardware and software into a seamless solution and has built a system that dramatically shapes the way we buy, sell, and live.

Plus: it’s cooler than a flying drone.

This post originally appeared on the Bolt Blog.

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 [Kiva robots and the Amazon Robotics subsidiary] more widely, so stay tuned.”

UPDATE 11-1-2015: Added Grenzebach’s G-Com storage and picking system to the list of vendors offering competing systems to Kiva’s.

Phil Hardin, Amazon’s director of investor relations also said:

The wider use of robots at fulfillment centers has had a direct impact on productivity. It’s a bit of an investment that has implications for a lot of elements of our cost structure, but we’re happy with Kiva. It has been a great innovation for us, and we think it makes the warehouse jobs better, and we think it makes our warehouses more productive.

Amazon acquired Kiva Systems for $775 million in 2012 and recently renamed it Amazon Robotics. It is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Amazon. This left a big gap in the marketplace for robotic innovation in distribution and fulfillment centers because Kiva’s goods-to-man technology was taken in house by Amazon.

Distribution centers (also referred to as warehouses, DCs, fulfillment centers and package handling centers) are principal parts of the order processing and fulfillment process. As the e-commerce boom continues to grow, warehouse managers need to find new suppliers to meet their automation needs for their DCs. Amazon is just one of many online e-commerce providers in need of robots and automation; Alibaba and Jingdong in China and Flipkart and Snapdeal in India are also big e-commerce companies adding robots to their warehouses.

eCommerce is the fastest growing segment of retail. In 2013 it represented less than 10% of overall retail, but has been growing at nearly 15% annually and is expected to continue at that rate for the remainder of the decade. Online retailers are having to change their operations to meet this growing demand.

A few startups are beginning to enter the market to fill the gap left by Kiva:

Fetch Robotics, a Silicon Valley startup, recently received $23 million in equity funding from SoftBank to scale up operations. The Fetch robot is a mobile manipulator that can be autonomously deployed to pick orders and place items into a pod on the companion Freight robot, which then autonomously navigates to a packing station. Multiple Freight robots can support Fetch robots and all are coordinated and monitored by a real-time web-based communications and information system that allows warehouse managers to know where robots are, how orders are being fulfilled and inventory status.

GreyOrange, a Singapore-based Indian startup, is beginning to distribute their Butler robots — square versions of Kiva’s round robots — along with their goods-to-man warehousing system, which is also very similar to Kiva’s system of moving portable shelving to a picker/packer station for picking and then returning them to a dynamic warehouse location. GreyOrange offers exactly the same process and sells the mobile robots, mobile storage units, pick/put stations, charging devices and warehouse control system. GreyOrange received a $30 million equity investment from a group of VCs to enable international expansion to Japan and China, and hire 25 additional people in Hong Kong and Singapore.

Harvest Automation, a startup initially focused on moving potted plants from one location to another — a very labor-intensive task in the nursery segment of the agriculture industry. Their HV-100 mobile robots reduce labor headcount and costs and provide needed pot manipulation at very low cost. Now that Harvest Automation has mastered the task and successfully brought their product to market, they are expanding into the warehouse with their new TM-100 mobile material handling platform. The rugged TM-100 enables workers to pick and place goods in a cart, which then autonomously whisks off and navigates to a selected destination for further processing.

In addition to the startups mentioned above, old-line companies are also entering the market. The 55-year old German-headquartered Grenzebach Group is a good example. Grenzebach has held interests in KUKA, Inos Automation, SnoxStellar AGVs, and Swisslog – all involved in robotics, vision systems and materials handling as well as their new G-Com mobile storage and picking system. Grenzebach is still the controlling partner in all but KUKA and Swisslog. [KUKA bought back it’s shares from Grenzebach and acquired Swisslog for $357m in September, 2014.] BLG Logistics was awarded the German Logistics Award 2015 for an installation in the warehouse of a trading company of 74 Grenzebach G-Com robots, delivering goods from 800 shelves to five picking stations.

Bottom line

Amazon isn’t the only e-commerce warehouse operator adding robots to their automation arsenal.  Think Coca Cola, Walmart, Nike, Ikea, FedEx, and UPS. And there are hundreds of name-brand suppliers of warehousing automation technology such as Westfalia, Egemin, Schaefer, Swisslog, Vanderlande, Daifuku, Intelligrated, JBT, Knapp and Thiele to name just a few. There is a transition in technology to reduce fixed racking and conveyor costs in favor of dynamic storage and mobility methods. Thus far only Kiva and these new startups are offering that level of disruptive system, but the big companies are sure to enter the fray soon with competing products.

If you liked this article, you may also be interested in:

• SoftBank invests in Fetch Robotics
• Competing robotic warehouse systems
• GreyOrange gets $30m for mobile robots
• Team RBO from Berlin wins Amazon Picking Challenge convincingly
• Robots in Depth: Melonee Wise on building robots, and robot companies

See all the latest robotics news on Robohub, or sign up for our weekly newsletter.

TEDGlobal 2013 in Edinburgh, Scotland. June 12-15, 2013. Photo: James Duncan Davidson

In this 4^th 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 co-founder of Kiva Systems. The series explores success stories and common obstacles in industry-academia collaborations in the field of robotics, and examines the differences  between these collaborations in the US, Europe and Asia.

[Sascha Griffiths]
Can you describe your background a little? I am especially interested in your transitions between industry and academia. 

[Raffaello D’Andrea]
After getting my PhD at Caltech I became an assistant professor at Cornell University, where I was for ten years. I started the RoboCup program there and we had a RoboCup team that competed there for five years. We won the world championship four times. My area of research is dynamics and control systems, so, for me, robotics was kind of an application area. It’s a good system design problem.

While on sabbatical at MIT in 2003, I met Mick Mountz, an entrepreneur, and he told me about the problem he was trying to solve: distribution. That is when I decided to quit my sabbatical at MIT and join forces with him and Pete Wurman to start Kiva Systems.

In 2008, I officially moved to ETH Zurich but remained on as an advisor at Kiva, and I’ve been here since.

Would you say that Kiva Systems stemmed directly from your research?

No, I wouldn’t say directly. We did fundamental research on controlling robots and controlling dynamical systems. Kiva Systems has a connection to that, but it is not as though my research directly led to Kiva Systems. It was more that the knowledge, experience, and architectures that I learned during RoboCup transitioned into Kiva Systems.

Prof. Asada also mentioned in our interview with him that he thinks the practical character of RoboCup is really important. Do you think that is a good starting point?

Yes, absolutely.  A lot of our first hires at Kiva Systems were former RoboCup students from Cornell University. They learned great skills while they were doing these types of competitions:  how to work in teams and how to work at mechanical, electrical and computer science level issues. There are tight deadlines. You want to get the job done. There are a lot of parallels between doing things in competitions and being successful in the marketplace, and I think that is a great preparation.

Have you been in involved in academia-industry collaborations?

No, in fact I probably have a different view than most people on this topic, especially from most people in Europe. My thinking has been shaped more by the American system, where academia’s focus is on fundamental research. I would like to see more effort to strengthen academia and industry and I think the best way to do it is through entrepreneurs.

What do you think academia can offer to industry in a collaborative project? Do you think there is a reason why collaborations need to take place?

I do. I know a lot of colleagues who work really well with industry. Industry is full of interesting research problems, and it is full of folks who are interested in creating short-term, medium-term, and maybe even long-term gains. So, for them it makes sense to partner with industry. That is one way to do it. I tend to favor the other approach, which is to do fundamental research, and if it is good work, then attract the interest of entrepreneurs who are willing to learn about the new technology. There are also technologists who have an entrepreneurial spirit, who team up with domain experts and figure out how the technology could be used.

Where do you see the hurdles when technology is transferred from academia to the industry? Why do you think the transfer process is so slow?

The reward system in academia is very different to the reward system in industry. In academia, especially if you are doing fundamental research, robustness of what you are doing is not really the primary concern. It is new algorithms, new designs … and you don’t have to worry too much if it doesn’t work all the time. Of course in industry, especially with automation, that is a huge criterion. Systems have to work under different conditions; and they have to work all the time, 24/7. A lot of the time, it is about figuring out what is just a lab demo versus what is ready to be deployed in industry.

How do you think one could speed up the process of getting from the demo to a product that is commercially viable and achieving the robustness you mentioned?

Investment. Having entrepreneurs who understand where the technology is at and what is required to commercialize it, and who seek investment to actually do that process. This investment could come from private money or it could come from public funds, but it’s investment that speeds up the process.  I would favor that mechanism more than just giving money to the industry and academia for collaboration and say “commercialize this technology”. If you have entrepreneurs to lubricate this process, it will speed it up a lot.

You have already mentioned the reward systems. When you think of academic and industrial partners collaborating, how can they measure the success of their collaboration in your opinion?

I think one thing is patents, which are rewarded both in industry and academia. But I also think that a big metric of success is the students that are trained. A lot of the time, if it is a real collaboration between academia and the industry, those folks will transition into industry. I think you have to take a longer-term view than just a few years. You have to understand that if there is a relationship being built, it can form a pipeline of really talented PhDs with skills in that particular area, who then often go to work for that company. That is a huge plus, which is not immediate, but will have its benefits in the medium term.

How would you measure technological progress?

That depends on which way you look at it. If you are viewing it from an academic perspective, again, the reward is if it is getting accepted in top peer-reviewed publications. From the industrial side, the question is whether it is a product. And there is some stuff in between. I think you have to look at it on a case-by-case basis. I don’t think there is a simple metric. You have to look at the technology: how many years will it take to be commercialized? What impact will it have? Will something else replace it?

Do you know of something at the moment, for example, in the research with quadcopters, where you think that it has really improved the technology?

I think the limiting factor is not the technology, it is good business models. That is what is missing. The technology is quite far along … I think that once people figure out what the right business models are to commercialize this technology, things will move very quickly.

Do you see different models of technology transfer in North America and Europe?

I know Switzerland and I know the United States, and I think they are similar in many ways. If you develop technology at ETH, and it is done during research that is being funded, the inventors get a fraction of it, and the university gets a fraction of it. If students want to commercialize a technology themselves, they can license the technology from the university. If you personally don’t, the university can license it on your behalf. They get a certain fraction of the profits, the inventors get a certain fraction… That is also how it is done in the United States. I think that works well. It has the right incentives; it is not too onerous, where the university claims everything, which disincentives the inventors from doing it because they do not get any benefit. On the other hand, it is only fair that the university should get some rewards for developing technology and it is really leaving it up to the entrepreneurs to take these ideas and commercialize them. I think in that way it is similar. I cannot really talk about the rest of Europe.

Do you see any current trends in robotics, where you think real progress is being made towards commercialization?

I think people are looking at consumer robotics. But I think in the short term, it is going to be traditional manufacturing, helping existing businesses improve their operation through automation and robotics. That is where the potential is, simply because it is still a semi-structured environment. If you sell something to a consumer, it has to work in so many different situations. Every home is completely different. Whereas, if you are selling to a business that is trying to improve their manufacturing capabilities, for example, they have leeway on changing the way things are done, rearranging things, instrumenting things to help their operations. So, that is where I think you will see the big in-roads in robotics and automation.

Are we currently in a situation of increasing the market share and selling more, or are we seeing real progress?

No, I don’t think the market size is increasing. Before, it did not make sense to use automation in certain areas, but now the technology is improving in such a way that it does make sense to do so, and to do so in more industries.

Do you think academics lose interest as soon as something reaches market readiness?

Yes, I think that is the case. Academics are interested in doing fundamental research, and there is a different set of values and constraints when you want to commercialize something. For example, robustness – which I think is actually an interesting topic itself – has a lot of interesting research problems associated with it. They tend to be more at the system level. And I think only a few people are really interested in doing those sorts of things. So, I think, for the most part, academics lose interest. Not all, but a fair amount do.

Do you think that is a good or a bad thing?

I do not think it is a bad thing. I think that, again, you need something in between university research and commercialization to facilitate this process. There are many ways to do that. In Germany and in a lot of other European countries, there are strong industry-university collaborations. In the United States, it is more the entrepreneurial folks that are forming the glue. I tend to like the US model best. I think that it enables the quickest transition. Entrepreneurs are the ones who take on the stuff that is not ready for prime time, so to speak, and actually do it. And it takes investment. So, it is not bad that this happens … because without it, you would not get fundamental research done. So, I think that is perfectly fine.

In your TED talk, you talked about science, engineering, and arts coming together. I think you did not mention business and industry as such. Do you see these worlds connecting well or do you think they are all individual communities that tend to not communicate?

I think that they are separate entities, but there are people who are always at the overlap. You need enough of these people to ensure that there is a transfer of knowledge and interests.

Do you think the business, engineering, and science communities communicate enough?

I think they do. They could do more, of course. And I think the right way to do it is to provide the right incentives.

If you liked this article, you may also be interested in:

• The full ECHORD interview series
• Why fostering high-tech innovation and entrepreneurship matters to the economy, and what universities can do about it
• Live at TED Global 2013: Tweets, photos and video for quadrotor fans
• Raffaello D’Andrea on “Do robots kill jobs?”
• Raffaello D’Andrea on “How will robots shape the future of warfare?”
• Raffaello D’Andrea on “What funding scheme is the most conducive to creating a robotics industry?”
• Robots Podcast: Warehouse robots

See all the latest robotics news on Robohub, or sign up for our weekly newsletter.

From left: Pete Wurman, Rodney Brooks, Russ Angold and Henrik Christensen

 

1. Manufacturing – manufacturing represents 14% of the GDP and 11% of total employment. Close to 70% of net exports from the US are related to manufacturing. Thus manufacturing and robots are a very important area to the general economic health of the country.
2. Medical Robots – with 40+% annual growth over the last few years in the number of medical procedures performed using robots, it is essential to continue to develop and deploy robot systems and to reduce the overall cost of care.
3. Healthcare – finding cost-effective robotic solutions for rehabilitation and necessary household and personal tasks for the more than 11 million Americans living with severe disabilities.
4. Service – annual growth in professional service robots (which includes inspection of power plants and infrastructure such as bridges and transmission lines) is 30%, and in domestic service applications (such as vacuums, lawnmowers and toys), the growth rate is 20%. US companies have dominated this area and it is considered economically important to maintain the momentum.
5. Space – tremendous progress in science exploration of Mars and at the space station through the use of robotics has offered important insights into how the same systems can be used in daily lives. Partnerships such as with NASA’s Robonaut team and GM, and enhanced teleoperation and remote presence consulting are examples.
6. Defense – more than 25,000 robotic systems were deployed in ground and aerial systems in Iraq and Afghanistan. Dual use opportunities are tremendous as the FAA opens civilian airspace to these types of robotic devices. In a decade, airfreight may be transported coast-to-coast or transoceanic by remotely piloted aircrafts. This is another area where US companies have dominated and it is considered important to maintain the momentum.

10. Robot and Frank Film looks toward elderly care future

Among films like Real Steel and I, Robot, Robot & Frank emerged from the Sundance Film Festival as a refreshing film that offered roboticists a realistic vision for robots in elderly care.

9. First robotics ethics and law conference

The University of Miami School of Law hosted the first conferenceon legal and policy issues relating to robotics, a sign of things to come as unique enable robotics technologies raise new philosophical and legal concerns for lawyers and policymakers.

8. Baxter brings manufacturing robotics to small businesses

For four years, Rodney Brooks’ Heartland Robotics (now called Rethink Robotics) remained in stealth mode as many wondered what the acclaimed researcher and iRobot co-founder was plotting for the “manufacturing” domain. Finally, we met Baxter, a two-armed robot that can be programmed by demonstration to perform pick-and-place tasks. But it’s the small $20,000 price tag that is turning heads.

7. Amazon acquires Kiva for $775M

Amazon shocked the robotics world with its $775 million acquisition of Kiva Systems, maker of the automated warehouse logistics robots. It may not be a price we’ll see again any time soon, but the purchase signals a maturation of mobile robots that have become an integral part of business logistics.

6. Robonaut, Curiosity pave the way in space, WAVE glider robot traverses Pacific

With recent news in Washington considering the future of NASA, 2012 was a great year for the agency’s robotics program. First, Robonaut aboard the International Space Station began the year with an iconic handshake with the ISS commander. Since then, it has performed a variety of tasks in flipping switches, turning knobs, and grabbing handrails. b. Of course there was the “terrifying” Mars landing of the Curiosity rover in July. Armed with an arsenal of tools and laboratory equipment, Curiosity is turning out to be a successful robotic explorer. And just this month we learned that an autonomous wave glider robot from Liquid Robotics completed its one-year, 9000-mile Pacific voyage from California to Australia.

5. U.S. Government flexes muscle with DARPA ROBOTICS challenge and NRI

Back in 2004 when DARPA announced its first Grand Challenge in robotics, a reliable driverless car was a dream. Now, well, see the #4 story of the year below. The blue sky agency is at it again with the Robotics Challenge, a $34 million effort with the goal of producing a capable humanoid robot for disaster response scenarios. An added innovation to the challenge is an open-source simulator being developed by the Open Source Robotics Foundation (OSRF), which will serve as a contribution to the community but also permit a software-only team to earn a humanoid hardware platform and advance to the second phase of the challenge.

A year after the Obama Administration announced the National Robotics Initiative, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced $50 million in funding toward collaborative robots. While the amount is small compared to programs in Europe, Japan, and South Korea, the NRI is the first coordinated research funding focus in the U.S. for non-military robotic applications. For that, U.S. efforts come in at number five.

4. Driverless car legislation becomes law

The Google self-driving car has racked up 300,000 miles on the road as California, Florida and Nevada (last year) passed legislation setting up the procedures and requirements that will be needed for commercial driverless products. Several others, including D.C., are reviewing bills. With car manufacturers now introducing advanced sensors and increasing autonomy features in upcoming models, the legislation is ahead of the technological curve for once.

3. ROS turns 5

The Robot Operating System from Willow Garage. There’s not much more to say than I already have in previous posts. But a five-year anniversary for an open-source robotics software framework that continues to grow is a significant achievement. How fast has it grown? According to Tully Foote’s blog post at ros.org, there are 3699 public ROS packages (up from 1600 three years ago), 90 community-supported robot platforms (up from 50), and people are using ROS on all seven (yes, seven) continents. The recently launched Open Source Robotics Foundation is also a good sign for a sustainable movement.

2. Maker and start-up culture pushes robotics

In the same year that the iRobot Roomba celebrated 10 years on the market, we saw an acceleration of viable robotics businesses and products. For years many said that venture capitalists wanted nothing to do with hardware startups; they were too risky and required upfront capital, manufacturing, and inventory. That has clearly changed now, with increasing investments in robotics startups and entrepreneurs figuring out how to create products and solutions using robotics technology. The prestigious Y Combinator program funded Double Robotics and their price-shattering telepresence robot. Dmitry Grishin, a Russian investor, launched Grishin Robotics with $25 million of his own funds to invest in personal robotics companies. As of this writing, he’s invested in Double and the RobotAppStore. Furthermore, The Robot Report’s detailed map of nearly 1000 companies indicates 173 startups, 89 in the U.S. alone (not including many others still in stealth mode). And lest we forget the crowdfunding movement, which has spawned several robotics products and dozens more related “Internet of Things” devices. Some of our favorites: Romo, Hexy the Hexapod, OpenROV, and Autom.

Feeding into this hardware movement has been the growing maker culture, with a combination of 3D printers, hacker spaces, and inexpensive microcontrollers like the Arduino reducing the barrier to tinkering, building, and experimenting. Similarly, the Do-It-Yourself drone community has taken off with Wired Editor-in-Chief Chris Anderson leaving his post to take over 3D Robotics full-time.

1. Drones take center stage

It seems a week didn’t go by without a major story involving unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as they continue to be used in warzones in Afghanistan and shadow campaigns in Pakistan, Yemen, and the horn of Africa. Regardless of the ethics, sovereignty concerns, and the like, drones have saturated the national discourse and are here to stay on the battlefield, and there is little doubt we will begin to see remote-controlled and semi-autonomous UAVs in domestic surveillance and commercial applications as soon as 2015 in the United States. For these reasons, they take the number one spot.

Have another top story we didn’t list? We’d love to hear them! Let us know in the comments section.

Driving the expansion and change in DCs are (1) online sales and consumer expectations of speedy delivery, (2) enhanced data manipulation capabilities, multidimensional processing and integration of new-tech mobile robotics into material handling, (3) proof that goods-to-man methods saves money, reduces labor and increases productivity, and (4) a current need to develop more cost-efficient centers (caused by delays and skittishness to make capital investments during the economic crisis). E-commerce sales are growing at an annual compounded growth rate of 8.5% – double that of supercenters, club and dollar stores. Supermarkets and convenience stores are growing as well. The quantity of materials that are moved daily through DCs is staggering as are the streams of data and algorithm considerations. [Source: Nielsen TDLinx & Nielsen Analytics] 

The immensity and complexity of the supply process can be seen in this video showing how a Giant Eagle supermarket is resupplied from its regional distribution center:

Amazon has and continues to lead e-commerce-driven distribution with their pick-to-cart method (otherwise known as man-to-goods) and their promise of speedy economical delivery. Workers run around and fill carts and deliver them to conveyors where they are transported to packing stations where individual shipments are processed and staged for pickup by FedEx, UPS, etc.. The metrics for this are 160 picks per hour. The video below shows that process.

http://youtu.be/i6H7nfHjHtY

Kiva Systems disrupted those metrics and increased worker productivity by reversing the man-to-goods process. This method brings the goods to the packer (goods-to-man). As Kiva’s success became proven in the field, Amazon acquired Kiva for $775 million and is beginning to install Kiva systems in their new warehouses. It is estimated that the new Kiva metric for Amazon consumer goods is 600 items per hour.

These metrics translate into fewer employees and lower warehouse costs, which include not only the structure but the inside storage and material handling equipment as well. Steve Banker, a consultant at ARC Advisory Group, recently wrote in Logistics Viewpoints:

If you conduct a Google search on “Amazon distribution center,” you come across announcements over the past year for DCs in Virginia, New Jersey, and South Carolina. According to these articles, warehouses costing roughly $50-65 million will employ 1,500 to 2,000 workers.

But then I came across an article about a new Indiana DC. This DC is costing $150 million and the company is only promising 1,000 new workers. Could this be one of the new warehouses that will be using Kiva? The employment numbers seem to add up. This DC will employ at least one third fewer workers.

European DCs tend to be smaller than those in the US where massive centers for Wallmart and Amazon often exceed 1 million sq ft. Amazon has said that it will be filling its new 1 million sq ft distribution centers with Kiva robots. According to their financial reports, they are opening 12 new Kiva-equipped centers in 2012 with more planned for 2013. That is a lot of Kiva mobile robots, and this demand will surely keep them busy building and integrating those devices and their related software systems into Amazon’s distribution scheme. In fact, Kiva has already laid off most of their sales and marketing staff but has increased their support staff to assist their new owner (and biggest client). As Amazon leads the consumer products industry to same day delivery, Kiva robots help give them that flexibility. [One-day turnaround isn’t unique to Amazon; it is often a necessity. Think produce: vegetables, fruits, baked goods. These goods regularly move in and out of DCs within 24 hours.]

Kiva’s acquisition by Amazon has created a void in innovative material handling technology just at the time when companies that had put off building or improving their DCs because of the economic crisis are now ready to invest again. Kiva’s low cost for warehouse shelving and speed of installation in bare-boned facilities are far cheaper and faster than any other method offered.

However, Kiva-equipped distribution centers aren’t the only methods available for handling robotic-assisted fulfillment. There are many new technologies as well as older-style methods now augmented with various robotics to handle the myriad types of warehoused goods. Amazon, Zappos and other consumer sales companies warehouse and ship small-quantity consumer items. Food distribution and intra-company distribution centers process on the case level. One east coast DC for a chain of groceries regularly processes 20 million cases per week. DCs not only focus on getting their goods in and out of the system but also concentrate on maximizing productivity and keeping their labor costs as low as possible.

Handling, distribution, transport and delivery – and the amortization of DC setup charges – often represent more cost than raw materials and manufacturing combined.  Consequently, warehousing and material handling are a big business for hundreds of different types of companies: conveyors, rollers, racks, vision systems, hoists, shelving, electric motors, slides, barcode readers, printers, ladders, gantries, tugs, forklifts, autonomous lifts and tugs, skids, totes, carts, and software systems of all types, to name just a few. Big players in the field include Intelligrated, Egemin Automation, Fromm, Daifuku Webb, Adept, Frog AGV Systems, Seegrid, Fuji, Edict, Omega Lift, Nordock, Interlake Mecalux, Automated Packaging, Itoh Denki, etc. Most of these vendors augment the man-to-goods model.

There are three companies transitioning to offer goods-to-man functionality: Symbotic, Swisslog and Dematic. The latter two have been in the material handling business for quite some time and have introduced many new robotic solutions. Swisslog is publicly-traded (SLOG:SW); the other two are privately held. All three of these vendors emphasize maximizing warehouse density which can be seen by level upon level (multiple vertical rows) of floor to ceiling racks.

Symbotic

Symbotic’s Matrix Rover travels along shelf rows picking and restocking as required but can also operate autonomously on warehouse floors.

Symbotic, previously named CasePick Systems, is a recent spin-off from C&S Wholesale Grocers, the largest grocery supply company in the US. For the past seven years C&S has been the test bed for the development of Symbotic’s line of products which include floor to ceiling high-density shelving and racks, storage and retrieval software, hardware systems, palletizer robots and robotic rovers. Now, as a separate company, they are a provider to C&S as well as other companies.

Symbotic focuses on handling skids and cases rather than on open-box or individual items. In an automated case/pallet warehouse, utilizing available storage area, including height as efficiently as possible, is the goal. Symbotic attempts to maximize usable space by providing and/or integrating all of the shelving, conveyors, stackers, robotic systems, robotic rovers and software, often reaching 17 rows high with the number of aisles limited only by the square footage of the warehouse. It’s like multi-level chess except on 17 levels! 

Guided by extraordinarily complex software, rovers speed along their row to pick or replenish cases of goods. Once a case is grabbed, the rovers take their goods to a Symbotic-invented device which enables the transfer of cases from multiple rovers at all levels of the shelving structure simultaneously, to a device for getting them down to floor level and then to a conveyor/tug system. The material is then moved to a station where Symbotic integrates heavy-duty Fanuc robotic arms in a palletizing process which then stacks the goods for shipment.

Swisslog

Left to right: Swisslog’s AutoStore drop-down rovers, Tornado lifts and SmartCarriers.

Swisslog builds modularized conveyors, stacker cranes, row rovers (called carriers) and autonomous tugs as well as their new AutoStore robots. Swisslog can handle open-case light goods and pallet/case systems. Swisslog provides European style material handling often characterized by high capital and operating costs and lots of mechanical devices. They enjoy very high productivity and space utilization in return.

Swisslog’s new AutoStore rovers race along the top of modular aluminum storage racks which are located just below ceiling level. The rovers reach down to get bins of targeted goods which are vertically stacked on top of each other. Then they race to a lift/crane which drops the goods down and conveys them to pick and pack stations and/or pallets for shipment. Once the bins have been picked, they are returned to the stack in the same manner.

Swisslog, as its name implies, is European and as such, must always be able to handle unique existing space considerations, often having to adapt to some very unique building configurations. Swisslog claims that their methods maximizes both vertical and horizontal space enabling them to process up to 1,000 picks per hour.

Dematic

Dematic goods-to-person shuttles are located at every level in all aisles and are serviced by high-speed elevators where material is lowered down to processing stations.

Dematic, headquartered in Luxembourg, is an established European style provider and integrator of logistics and material handling solutions. They offer almost every type of storage solution imaginable and provide distribution and handling for B2B and B2C as well as grocery, apparel, food and beverage and general merchandise.

Dematic provides conveyors, tugs, sorters, lifts and a variety of software for warehouse management, order fulfillment, RFID and SAP solutions and transport maximization. They use all of the different picking methods: pick by voice, pick by light, RF picking, etc.

Their most recent product addition is their row Multishuttle, a robotic rover that travels each row in each aisle in the warehouse picking orders and delivering them to a lift which sends them onward to a packing station.

Software

As is the case in most robotics, smart software is critical to its success. Imagine the algorithms involved in resource allocation to determine which product goes in which bin; which order gets assigned to which station; which pod comes to which station; which robot should get which pod. Then compound that with the problems of integrating that solution into a SAP, IBM, Oracle, Manhattan Associates, or Red Prairie fulfillment system. Then add customized delivery optimization solutions (such as sequencing skids in a truck to delivery routes and sequencing the contents of skids to how they are offloaded in the store) to the mix and you have some really complex software packages.

All of the companies mentioned in this article (Amazon, Kiva, Symbotic, C&S, Dematic and Swisslog) blend techniques from AI, controls systems, machine learning, operations research and other software and engineering disciplines into their mobile robotic platform. All are focused on transforming fulfillment to the goods-to-man methodology because of the increased productivity gains and all are pioneering as they go because goods-to-man is new territory, software-wise.

Summary

This article originated as a profile of one company as they began to robotically augment distribution centers. But, as I gathered information, the story has morphed into a review of why Kiva Systems’ innovative methods – the goods-to-man methodology – is far superior to other older styles of fulfillment. These older style man-to-goods methods are characterized by serious labor costs, heavy turnover, high cost shelving, conveyors, lifts, and transport and other systems to get targeted materials to a picker/packer or palletizing operation. Robotics, if used at all, is used to augment the worker’s reach, mobility and lifting. The new-tech companies profiled above (Swisslog, Symbotic and Dematic) have begun to implement goods-to-mansystems incorporating old and new style racks and shelving and all seem to be doing the same thing: building multi-layer shelving upon which rovers troll the levels and aisles picking their stuff and shuttling it off to an elevator which sends it via conveyors or otherwise to pick/pack or palletizing stations, all controlled by colossally-complex proprietary software.

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 backed mortgage company, has posted a profit for the first time since 2007 without needing a government bailout. The decline in home prices is slowing, as are mortgage delinquency rates and the rate of American home purchasing is on the rise again.

“We expect our financial results for 2012 to be significantly better than 2011,” Susan R. McFarland, Fannie Mae’s chief financial officer, said in a statement. “As our serious delinquency rate declines and home prices stabilize, we expect to reduce our reserves, which combined with revenue from our high-quality new book of business will drive our future results.” [1]

While not everyone is getting rich yet, the overall financial indicators show that the U.S. economy has rebounded faster than predicted. The stock market has doubled since 2009, corporate profits are surging and the U.S. economy is growing at 3% pa. As financial journalist Daniel Gross puts it:

“Like the world’s first bionic man, the U.S. economy has come back—better, stronger, and faster than most analysts expected, and than most of its peers.” [2]

While this is a U.S. centric view and some of Europe is still in financial crisis, nonetheless China and S.E.Asia are surging and many African economies are showing very promising proportional growth rates. There are other sources that describe the current world economic status but it’s no longer a bad time for a capital intensive industry like robotics to grow. Particularly if business models lower the risk by utilizing lease models or the rapid cheap trial and error methods of startups.

Where Defense budgets are tightening on traditional robotics, like unmanned systems, the Whitehouse is committing spending towards other newer robotics growth areas. All this indicates that robotics is ready to support itself as an industry, rather than be supported as a research project. Legislation is being passed allowing the introduction of driverless cars and by 2015 we may see changes permitting the commercial use of small drones in U.S. airspace.

3. Maturity of Robotics Technology

Rodney Brooks, founder of iRobot and current CEO of Heartland Robotics, is one of many expressing the view that robotics has progressed beyond a cool new research area and into the world of robot products. While making new discoveries is exciting, there isn’t enough effort going in to using those same exciting new technologies in everyday applications.

 ”Users just want to get a task done. They don’t care if it’s a cool robot. You may, but they may not care if it’s a robot at all,” [3]

So, the question now isn’t what robots can we build, it’s what can we do with the ones we’ve built already. The robots that are successful products seem simple and boring, eg. industrial arms, vacuum cleaners, cars. But when applied to the right problem, even simple robots are transformative. The first successful consumer robot was of course iRobot’s Roomba vacuum cleaner with more than 7 million sold worldwide. But the biggest acquisition of a robotics company was Amazon buying Kiva in March 2012 for $775 million.

Kiva’s system relies on small orange turtle like robots that move shelves around in warehouses. The brains are largely on servers. The robots aren’t ‘cool or exciting’. They are barely even robots. But they solve the problem that sank WebVan, one of the most spectacular e-commerce failures. You can only do half your e-commerce in the cloud. Somewhere real products have to be shipped to real places.

Kiva founder Mick Mountz is an MIT engineer who worked at WebVan. “We decided products that could walk and talk on their own would be the best way to solve the problem,” he laughs. [4]

Think of Kiva bots as the hands and feet of the Cloud.  They are not autonomous Star-Trek-like agents, but are wirelessly connected to and controlled by the Cloud in real-time. [5]

Amazon, like WebVan, has to ship product. Reportedly, phsyical order fulfilment cost nearly 9 percent of Amazon’s $40 billion global revenues. This is a big enough pain point for some companies to be willing to trial the Kiva System in a few locations, especially smaller retailers, like Staples in 2004, who faced increasing competition in cloud commerce.

Kiva’s robots today are processing millions of orders a year in retailers’ warehouses across the United States, the UK, and Europe, quietly driving Kiva’s startling 80 percent annual growth. On the distant horizon is a plan to bring Kiva’s approach to the manufacturing sector. [6]

Jeff Bezos from Amazon is also investing heavily in Heartland Robotics. Brooks has a vision of transforming the workplace by making robots that can be safely worked with, shifting robots out of sterile, safe factory environments and bringing them alongside people. His analogy is with mainframe computer systems in the 1960s to the personal computer of the 1980s.

“Originally ordinary people couldn’t touch computers. Now they can. What if ordinary people could touch robots?” [7]

The future of robotics is exciting, but we’ve barely begun to fully explore the potential of the simple robots we already have.

next post: Increasing modularity & commonality plus decreasing component costs

1. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/10/business/fannie-mae-profit-signals-a-stabilizing-housing-market.html
2. http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/04/29/myth-of-decline-u-s-is-stronger-and-faster-than-anywhere-else.html
3. http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57391570-76/robots-still-lack-the-human-touch/
4. http://www.forbes.com/sites/markpmills/2012/03/23/amazons-kiva-robot-acquisition-is-bullish-for-both-amazon-and-american-jobs/
5. http://www.alumni.hbs.edu/bulletin/2012/march/innovation-mountz.html
6. http://www.alumni.hbs.edu/bulletin/2012/march/innovation-mountz.html
7. http://www.boston.com/business/technology/innoeco/2012/05/heartland_robotics_will_unveil.html

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 show focused on handling materials in the factory and also in the warehouse, Modex 2012, held in Atlanta (after 16 years in Cleveland), displayed the wares and solutions offered by 560 vendors and covered all aspects of picking, packing, handling and transporting material. Unlike industrial robots from the past, the newer robots displayed at Modex are able to adapt, easy to use and intuitive to operate.

After talking with many exhibitors, my impression is that there were more buyers than in previous years and those buyers appeared to be holistic in their approach to revamping their material handling in the factories and storage and pick and pack setup in their warehouses.

Their reasoning, and the underlying economic drivers for their renewed interest appeared to be:

• a lack of qualified labor
• and higher labor costs
• fear of the effects from the forthcoming retirements of baby-boomers
• customized ordering via e-commerce requiring speedy and customized pick and pack
• the availability of new sensors and lower-cost automation and robotic devices to augment workers and enhance their productivity
• prices for these new devices and systems are holding steady or lowering
• productivity enhancing concept systems from a few years ago are now proven and available
• low interest rates make such investments even more affordable
• mid-market companies can now afford material handling automation because
• installation is easier and less costly
• software and communication methods are more intuitive and easier to use
• there is less need for costly integration assistance
• they need to automate to stay price competitive with the larger companies
• and… needed improvements have been put off because of the economic crisis and must now be renewed just to stay competitive

From left: Adept’s Transporter, Intelligrated’s bin controller, Kiva Systems’ robot, Creform’s AGV and Grenzebach’s trolleys.

Although there were not a lot of robots or robotic components shown, their presence was implicit in all but the most utilitarian booths. For example, free-form vision-guided navigation (with collision avoidance) instead of tapes, ceiling signals and other path marking methods was openly praised and thought of as finally being of sufficient robustness, safety, speed and minimal programming, to finally become a realistic choice for material handling so many vendors were showing how they were adapting.

Vendors I thought of as particularly interesting at Modex included:

• Intelligrated displayed their software integration system enabling every form of communication with the various automation devices, workers and robots involved in order fulfillment: voice, ViPR, regular barcodes, RFID and scanners, touch devices, tablets and pads, etc.
• Kiva Systems novel robots, shelving and their Mobile-Robotic Fulfillment System were not only widely viewed at the Kiva booth but discussed or compared in many of the other booths as well. One interesting tidbit: Kiva gave an iPad to visitors to their booth so that they could place an order which, seconds later, they were able to pick from the movable shelves brought to the user. Very cool.
• Egemin Automation showed how their warehouse management software system integrated with other manufacturers automation, conveyor devices, and palletizing equipment in addition to Egemin’s own line of AGVs.
• Daifuku Webb displayed their Smart-cart line of AGV tugs for pallets of materials, shelves and containers, and emphasized the flexibility and safety needs of an active warehousing center.
• Adept, which is in the process of expanding its product line from solely industrial robots to products in the service sector as well, introduced their new mobile transporter/courier. They showed how their mobile devices were integrated into Swisslog‘s hospital and healthcare product line and also how their motion controller module is the navigation and collision avoidance system within RMT Robotics’ ADAM line of mobility robots. A few other companies also offered similar vision/navigation/controller modules.
• Frog AGV Systems, like many other AGV systems providers, has improved their navigation methods and software and is selling components and modules to OEMs.
• Systems Logistics, a European full-service provider, demonstrated an automatic picking station for mixed SKU skids. This feature – mixed SKU and inverse loading – was talked about all over the show as the “new” cost-saving way to load pallets and trucks for expeditious delivery.
• Seegrid Robotic emphasized the significant cost savings and productivity enhancements of using robotic forklifts and other tugs, tractors and trolleys. Their special value-added offering was a AGV learning system where the system’s vision-guided navigation system learns the moves and layout from a human driver. Seegrid, like many others, is offering their navigation and vehicle control system as a module for other companies to incorporate into their existing systems.
• Creform had a line of modular mobile devices for moving lightweight carts, trays and platforms and their low lying robotic devices were similar to a few other vendors like Grenzebach‘s automatic trolleys and platforms and Transbotics‘ transportation robotics.

Brad Berger, editor-in-chief of SupplyChainBrain magazine, said that investing in automation for material handling is back after many years of being put off because of the economy. Buyers are creating smart warehouses where RF, voice, barcodes, tablets and software all work together seamlessly as tools in the bigger picture of moving, handling, picking and packing our materials and products.

As an aside, and with a focus on which companies will lead this new world of robotic augmentation of material handling and the workers involved, Adept Technology (NASDAQ:ADEP) appears to be moving toward bridging the gap between industrial robotics and the very real need for safer, more flexible, vision-enabled, mobile and easily trainable service robots. Today they announced a collaboration with Willow Garage to harness Willow Garage’s ROS (robotic operating system) so that new methods can be used to control, simulate and program legacy industrial robots. Through acquisitions and business acumen and software changes, they seem to be successfully entering the service robotics sector adding those extra values – along with robustness, durability, connectivity and ease of integration that the industrial robotics manufacturers presently provide.

18,000-20,000 people attended Modex 2012 – 10% were international visitors. There were 560 exhibitors in the 170,000 sq ft space. Very impressive, very busy… and very tiring.