Robotic software takes control

摘要

In the spring of 2016, I drove to Devens, Mass., to see something truly new in the post-Kiva era: Autonomous mobile robots in a production setting at a Quiet Logistics e-fulfillment distribution center. Locus Robotics, the startup company founded by Bruce Welty and Mike Johnson, was still more concept than commercial product, but even then, Welty envisioned a multi-billion-dollar business for autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) in the warehouse. A little over a year later, I had the opportunity to watch another first: a mobile piece-picking robot from IAM Robotics at work at Rochester Drug's distribution center in New York.