Bulkier items have been a challenge for automating order fulfillment in warehouses in distribution centers. RightHand Robotics Inc. yesterday launched its RightPick 4 piece-picking system, which it said can handle items up to 25% larger and 50% heavier than RightPick 3 can, reducing the need for human intervention.
“Retailers continue to have challenges with growing demand for faster and more accurate order fulfillment, in part due to ongoing labor challenges,” said Brendon Bielat, vice president of product and marketing at RightHand, in a release.
“With the launch of the RightPick 4 system, we have created a new piece-picking solution that delivers increased autonomy, reliability, and serviceability,” he asserted. “We have trained our system by leveraging more than a petabyte of operational data, gathered for over eight years from picking tens of millions of items around the globe. This massive amount of data has helped us create a smarter, more robust solution for real-world fulfillment challenges.”
Founded in 2015 by a DARPA challenge-winning team from the Harvard Biorobotics Lab, the Yale GRAB Lab, and MIT, RightHand Robotics said it has applied computer vision and machine learning to provide “flexible and scalable automation for predictable order fulfillment.” The Charlestown, Mass.-based company said its data-driven robots can help retailers meet e-commerce challenges.
RightPick 4 expands range with updated hardware, AI
Novel approaches in RightPick 4‘s hardware and software enable improved picking and grasping, as well as faster integration, claimed RightHand Robotics. The system includes an upgraded sensor suite.
RightPick 4’s newly designed hardware and AI-based algorithms enable a larger picking range of item SKUs, advanced item-handling capacity, and increased system autonomy, the company said.
“It reduces the need for human intervention by deploying advanced gripping strategies to pick and place more items, even those it has never seen before,” said RightHand. It added that the new system uses RightPick AI to continuously learn and expand the range of items that it can successfully handle.
“With improved smart grasp and suction seal quality detection, RightHand Robotics can enable autonomous piece picking for market verticals such as general merchandise, office supplies, apparel, pharmaceutical products, cosmetics, and 3PLs [third-party logistics providers],” said the company.
Bielat recently spoke with Mobile Robot Guide about how robotics adoption is increasing because of labor shortages plus advances and heightened interest in artificial intelligence.
RightHand to show RaaS offerings at MODEX
“We are thrilled to unveil RightPick 4, a product realized through collaboration with customers and partners,” stated Brian Owen, president and CEO of RightHand Robotics. “We have hardened our product with a focus on reliability and autonomy so that our customers can increase their operational capacity without being hindered by labor volatility.”
“The total market potential for the RightPick 4 system is staggering, especially in global, post-pandemic logistics,” he said. “It’s no longer just early adopters approaching our technology. The general awareness of robotic piece-picking has increased, and omnichannel retailers are realizing it’s a necessity. The RightPick 4 system is a competitive advantage with a quick time-to-value for stakeholders within the supply chain.”
RightHand Robotics offers its piece-picking systems to warehouse operators through a robots-as-a-service (RaaS) model. It plans to discuss RightPick 4’s features and capabilities in Booth C6479 at MODEX 2024 in Atlanta in March.