Author: Zach Winn | MIT News<\/p>\n
There are some jobs human bodies just weren\u2019t meant to do. Unloading trucks and shipping containers is a repetitive, grueling task \u2014 and a big reason warehouse injury rates are more than twice the national average.<\/p>\n
The Pickle Robot Company wants its machines to do the heavy lifting. The company\u2019s one-armed robots autonomously unload trailers, picking up boxes weighing up to 50 pounds and placing them onto onboard conveyor belts for warehouses of all types.<\/p>\n
The company name, an homage to The Apple Computer Company, hints at the ambitions of founders AJ Meyer \u201909, Ariana Eisenstein \u201915, SM \u201916, and Dan Paluska \u201997, SM \u201900. The founders want to make the company the technology leader for supply chain automation.<\/p>\n
The company\u2019s unloading robots combine generative AI and machine-learning algorithms with sensors, cameras, and machine-vision software to navigate new environments on day one and improve performance over time. Much of the company\u2019s hardware is adapted from industrial partners. You may recognize the arm, for instance, from car manufacturing lines \u2014 though you may not have seen it in bright pickle-green.<\/p>\n
The company is already working with customers\u00a0like UPS, Ryobi Tools, and Yusen Logistics to take a load off warehouse workers, freeing them to solve other supply chain bottlenecks in the process.<\/p>\n
\u201cHumans are really good edge-case problem solvers, and robots are not,\u201d Paluska says. \u201cHow can the robot, which is really good at the brute force, repetitive tasks, interact with humans to solve more problems? Human bodies and minds are so adaptable, the way we sense and respond to the environment is so adaptable, and robots aren\u2019t going to replace that anytime soon. But there\u2019s so much drudgery we can get rid of.\u201d<\/p>\n
Finding problems for robots<\/strong><\/p>\n Meyer and Eisenstein majored in computer science and electrical engineering at MIT, but they didn\u2019t work together until after graduation, when Meyer started the technology consultancy Leaf Labs, which specializes in building embedded computer systems for things like robots, cars, and satellites.<\/p>\n \u201cA bunch of friends from MIT ran that shop,\u201d Meyer recalls, noting it\u2019s still running today. \u201cAri worked there, Dan consulted there, and we worked on some big projects. We were the primary software and digital design team behind Project Ara, a smartphone for Google, and we worked on a bunch of interesting government projects. It was really a lifestyle company for MIT kids. But 10 years go by, and we thought, \u2018We didn\u2019t get into this to do consulting. We got into this to do robots.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n When Meyer graduated in 2009, problems like robot dexterity seemed insurmountable. By 2018, the rise of algorithmic approaches like neural networks had brought huge advances to robotic manipulation and navigation.<\/p>\n To figure out what problem to solve with robots, the founders talked to people in industries as diverse as agriculture, food prep, and hospitality. At some point, they started visiting logistics warehouses, bringing a stopwatch to see how long it took workers to complete different tasks.<\/p>\n \u201cIn 2018, we went to a UPS warehouse and watched 15 guys unloading trucks during a winter night shift,\u201d Meyer recalls. \u201cWe spoke to everyone, and not a single person had worked there for more than 90 days. We asked, \u2018Why not?\u2019 They laughed at us. They said, \u2018Have you tried to do this job before?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n It turns out warehouse turnover is one of the industry\u2019s biggest problems, limiting productivity as managers constantly grapple with hiring, onboarding, and training.<\/p>\n The founders raised a seed funding round and built robots that could sort boxes because it was an easier problem that allowed them to work with technology like grippers and barcode scanners. Their robots eventually worked, but the company wasn\u2019t growing fast enough to be profitable. Worse yet, the founders were having trouble raising money.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were desperately low on funds,\u201d Meyer recalls. \u201cSo we thought, \u2018Why spend our last dollar on a warm-up task?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n With money dwindling, the founders built a proof-of-concept robot that could unload trucks reliably for about 20 seconds at a time and posted a video of it on YouTube. Hundreds of potential customers reached out. The interest was enough to get investors back on board to keep the company alive.<\/p>\n The company piloted its first unloading system for a year with a customer in the desert of California, sparing human workers from unloading shipping containers that can reach temperatures up to\u00a0130 degrees in the summer. It has since scaled deployments with multiple customers and gained traction among third-party logistics centers across the U.S.<\/p>\n The company\u2019s robotic arm is made by the German\u00a0industrial robotics\u00a0giant KUKA. The robots are mounted on a custom mobile base with an onboard computing systems\u00a0so they can navigate to docks and adjust their positions inside trailers autonomously while lifting. The end of each arm features a suction gripper that clings to packages and moves them to the onboard conveyor belt.<\/p>\n The company\u2019s robots can pick up boxes ranging in size from 5-inch cubes to 24-by-30 inch boxes. The robots can unload anywhere from 400 to 1,500 cases per hour depending on size and weight. The company fine tunes pre-trained generative AI models and uses a number of smaller models to ensure the robot runs smoothly in every setting.<\/p>\n The company is also developing a\u00a0software platform it can integrate with third-party hardware, from humanoid robots to autonomous forklifts.<\/p>\n \u201cOur immediate product roadmap is load and unload,\u201d Meyer says. \u201cBut we\u2019re also hoping to connect these third-party platforms. Other companies are also trying to connect robots. What does it mean for the robot unloading a truck to talk to the robot palletizing, or for the forklift to talk to the inventory drone? Can they do the job faster? I think there\u2019s a big network coming in which we need to orchestrate the robots and the automation across the entire supply chain, from the mines to the factories to your front door.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhy not us?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n The Pickle Robot Company employs about 130 people in its office in Charlestown, Massachusetts, where a standard \u2014 if green \u2014 office gives way to a warehouse where its robots can be seen loading boxes onto conveyor belts alongside human workers and manufacturing lines.<\/p>\n This summer, Pickle will be ramping up production of a new version of its system, with further plans to begin designing a two-armed robot sometime after that.<\/p>\n \u201cMy supervisor at Leaf Labs once told me \u2018No one knows what they\u2019re doing, so why not us?\u2019\u201d Eisenstein says. \u201cI carry that with me all the time. I\u2019ve been very lucky to be able to work with so many talented, experienced people in my career. They all bring their own skill sets and understanding. That\u2019s a massive opportunity \u2014 and it\u2019s the only way something as hard as what we\u2019re doing is going to work.\u201d<\/p>\n Moving forward, the company sees many other robot-shaped problems for its machines.<\/p>\n \u201cWe didn\u2019t start out by saying, \u2018Let\u2019s load and unload a truck,\u2019\u201d Meyers says. \u201cWe said, \u2018What does it take to make a great robot business?\u2019 Unloading trucks is the first chapter. Now we\u2019ve built a platform to make the next robot that helps with more jobs, starting in logistics but then ultimately in manufacturing, retail, and hopefully the entire supply chain.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Go to Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"