Xconomy: RightHand Robotics Picks Up $8M to Automate Next-Gen Warehouses
Summary
Now, several companies and research groups are trying to solve a longstanding problem in logistics—how to get a robot to pick up individual items from one place and put them down in another, in a fast, reliable, and adaptable way.“Most would agree that having a gripper/arm solution that could perform even 80 percent of the flexible tasks currently handled easily by humans in pick-pack-and-ship operations is still 5 to 10 years away,” says Mick Mountz, Kiva’s co-founder and former CEO.The company has developed a “hybrid gripper” (see photo) that uses robotic fingers and a suction cup to pick up and place anything from pill bottles to packaged food items; the system uses 3D computer vision and embedded sensors to see and feel what it’s doing.But the company’s real calling card is its software, which includes machine-learning algorithms that help the robot adapt to new objects and situations, according to RightHand.RightHand got started in 2014 after its co-founders met as collaborators through a “robotic manipulation” program sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.