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Step Up: Kiva’s founders (from left), Peter Wurman, Mick Mountz, and Raffaello D’Andrea, envision thousands of robots in warehouses. The third founder is Peter Wurman, an expert in multiagent systems and a former professor of computer science at North Carolina State University, in Raleigh. An engineering professor formerly at Cornell University and now at ETH, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, in Zurich, he joined Kiva after meeting Mick Mountz, a graduate of MIT and the Harvard Business School, who conceived the idea of using mobile robots to manage inventory. “But of course they never do.”ĭ’Andrea should know. “When you see these things moving, you think, ‘Oh my goodness, they’re going to hit,’ ” D’Andrea says. A computer cluster keeps track of all robots and racks on the floor, and resource-allocation algorithms efficiently orchestrate their movement. Kiva’s idea is simple: by making inventory items come to the warehouse workers rather than vice versa, you can fulfill orders faster. This is the demonstration facility of Kiva Systems, a start-up in Woburn, Mass., just north of Boston, that wants to reinvent the centuries-old warehouse business. They move along straight lines and make 90-degree turns, maneuvering just 15 centimeters from each other. One robot hauls shelves with 12-packs of Mountain Dew another carries bottles of Redken shampoo. They park underneath the man-high racks and start pirouetting the spinning is part of the mechanism that jacks the racks off the ground. Two dozen squat machines, like orange suitcases on wheels, scurry on the floor. “The beauty of our system,” Raffaello D’Andrea says as he paces across the warehouse, “is that you don’t have to walk over to the shelves to get things-the shelves come to you.” With that, he motions toward some 200 blue plastic racks sitting at the center of the building. Join the world’s largest professional organization devoted to engineering and applied sciences and get access to this e-book plus all of IEEE Spectrum’s articles, archives, PDF downloads, and other benefits. Join the world’s largest professional organization devoted to engineering and applied sciences and get access toĪll of Spectrum’s articles, archives, PDF downloads, and other benefits. For more exclusive content and features, consider , including the ability to save articles to read later, download Spectrum Collections, and participate inĬonversations with readers and editors. 's Digital Edition is exclusive for IEEE Membersįollowing topics is a feature exclusive for IEEE MembersĪdding your response to an article requires an IEEE Spectrum accountĬreate an account to access more content and features on The Institute content is only available for membersĭownloading full PDF issues is exclusive for IEEE Membersĭownloading this e-book is exclusive for IEEE Members Saving articles to read later requires an IEEE Spectrum account The slow, subtle light transitions were mesmerizing-we could have stared at it all day.Enjoy more free content and benefits by creating an account Here are some of the most innovative things we found while roaming the halls of the Amazon Robotics facility in Westborough, Massachusetts.Ī nod to Amazon’s innovation mindset greeted us in the lobby, where a digital art display of black metal rods and circular lights spanned a wall behind the reception desk. On the inside, you’ll find roboticists, technicians, and a host of other employees working on cutting-edge robots that will operate in fulfillment centers around the world-making it easier and safer for employees to fulfill customer orders.Īmazon recently invited nearly 100 reporters inside the facility for a rare look at the research and projects going on inside, and our team tagged along. From the outside, the facility looks like any other building in the area. Tucked away in a small suburb on the outskirts of Boston, an Amazon Robotics facility serves as the unassuming birthplace of some of the company’s most exciting technologies.