WAREHOUSE AUTOMATION
pick and place Fulfilling promise of
Keely Portway on the importance of vision for robots working in warehouses
T
he market for online shopping is continuing to grow at a rapid rate, which, in turn, has led to a rise
in automated warehouses. To use the obvious example, Amazon now has nearly 200 operating fulfilment centres globally, spanning more than 150 million square feet, where employees work alongside the retail giant’s robots to pick, pack and ship customer orders to the tune of millions of items per year. Tis would not be possible without machine vision, and it is not just the
hyperscale organisations benefiting from this kind of technology in their warehouses. German electrical supply wholesaler Obeta is now running a robotic station to pick and sort components at its facility in Berlin. Te wholesaler partnered with AI robotics company, Covariant, and logistics technology firm, Knapp, to bring the system into production.
Managing expectations Michael Pultke, head of logistics at Obeta, explained: ‘Customer expectations for fast, affordable package delivery have never been higher. To stay competitive, we need to modernise our operations and keep order processing and delivery running quickly and smoothly. Te Covariant-powered robot is an integral part of our live operations, exceeding our performance requirements and adapting quickly to change. AI robotics is a foundational part of our future strategy.’ Covariant was founded in 2017 by Rocky
Duan, Tianhao Zhang, Pieter Abbeel and Peter Chen. Abbeel is a professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at Berkeley Engineering, California, the engineering school from which the other three founders all graduated. Abbeel’s lab at UC Berkeley has enjoyed
a number of recent breakthroughs in robot learning, including a robot that organises laundry, robots that learn (simulated) locomotion, and robots that learn vision- based manipulation from trial and error and human VR teleoperation. Te firm is backed by lead investor
Amplify Partners, plus some big names in AI, such as Jeff Dean, Geoffrey Hinton, Yann LeCun and Raquel Urtasun. To date, it has raised $27m in funds, and the last two-and- a-half years have been spent researching, developing, testing and deploying its AI technology at Obeta, as well as facilities across North America and Europe.
Photoneo’s MotionCam-3D camera can inspect objects moving at 40m/s 28 IMAGING AND MACHINE VISION EUROPE FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020
Robots learning general abilities such as 3D vision at AI robotics firm Covariant @imveurope |
www.imveurope.com
Photoneo
Covariant
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