AsiaIndustrial NetNews: This week, Fetch Robotics launched two new large-scale logistics cargo handling at the exhibition.Robot.
In 2012, Amazon acquired Kiva Systems, a warehouse Robot company, for $775 million, officially opening the door to warehousing robots. In the past two years alone, there have been no less than 10 warehousing Robot start-ups similar to Kiva Systems in China. Last month, Geek+ and Kuicang successively completed financing of RMB 100 million. It seems that the golden age of warehousing robots is coming. This week, Silicon Valley startup Fetch Robotics unveiled two new large-scale logistics cargo handling robots at the ProMat conference in the United States. This article is from IEEE and compiled by Lei Feng.com.
The robot industry is ushering in a spring, and more and more robot manufacturing companies are beginning toExhibitionAnd the appearance at the event also shows that the entire industry is ready to meet the needs of practical applications. In the field of material handling, supply chain and logistics solutions, the American ProMat Conference is one of the more well-known professional exhibitions in the industry. This week, Fetch Robotics launched two new large-scale logistics cargo handling robots at the exhibition.
One of the Freight 500s is capable of handling a 500kg payload and is capable of handling ‘box’ sized loads – probably the standard box size for material handling, supply chain and logistics solutions. Another robot, the Freight 1500, is designed to handle pallet-like standard cargo boxes and is also larger in size, capable of handling a payload of 1,500 kilograms.
Above: The Freight 1500 is capable of handling a 1500kg payload
The Freight 1500 handling robot weighs nearly 470 kilograms, but is only 35.5 centimeters (about 14 inches) tall. In terms of height, the Freight 500 and Freight 1500 robots are the same. The Freight 1500 robot is equipped with lidar sensors on the front and rear, as well as a front-facing RGBD camera. It is worth mentioning that you only need to charge for one hour, this robot can get 90% of the power, and supports nine hours of continuous work. More importantly, in order to prevent accidental falling objects and smashing people, a large number of LED indicator lights are also installed on the robot.
In fact, as early as 2015, Canadian robotics companies Clearpath Robotics and OTTO Motors launched a mobile robot capable of handling 1,500 kilograms of heavy objects, and a year ago they also launched a 100 kilogram handling-level mobile robot. The OTTO and Fetch bots are closer in terms of payload, but the Fetch 500 bot may be more functionally advanced—at least for now.
But all along, the really tough problems in robotics development have been centered on software, not hardware. Melo, CEO of Fetchnee Wise says:
In many ways, robotic hardware is very similar. However, all the differences are in the software, such as how to distinguish between different sensor applications to enable autonomous navigation of robots, and so on.
In the future, two robotics companies, Fetch and OTTO, are likely to compete in the field of cargo handling and logistics – and it’s not impossible. Of course, with the continuous development of the market size of smart cargo handling robots, it is perfectly possible to “accommodate” Fetch, OTTO, and other logistics and freight robot companies against each other.
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