Promising news for companies betting on robots in logistics: US start-up Fetch Robotics has raised $23 million in an investment round.
Fetch Robotics developed the robot duo Fetch & Freight, which is fully capable of picking orders independently. Fetch picks the goods from the shelves, while Freight - which looks a lot like Amazon's Kiva - takes the goods away. The products are dropped into Freight's basket. Freight then takes the goods away.
Read also: Will this robot duo take over the warehouse?
Suitable for e-commerce warehouses
The duo also works at a nice pace. For instance, Fetch can pick goods as fast as the average warehouse worker, while his counterpart Freight is capable of covering two metres every second. Fetch can lift around 6 kg of goods and is therefore best suited for e-commerce warehouses that hold smaller products.
If the goods are too heavy for Fetch anyway, it can also deploy warehouse workers working with Freight. Fetch automatically follows the employee around the warehouse, so they do not have to push the trolley themselves. Conveniently, the robots also place themselves in the charging station as soon as the batteries are running low.
Robots the solution in a demand-driven economy.
The high amount invested in Fetch Robotics makes companies believe in such concepts. "The economy is becoming increasingly demand-driven. Companies are looking for solutions to meet that demand. Robots are an answer to this," said Kabir Misra of SoftBank, the party that invested a whopping $20 million in Fetch Robotics.
Editorial LogistiekProfs
