View original at www.roboticstomorrow.com

Tom Galluzzo, Founder | IAM Robotics Tell us about IAM Robotics & your role with the company. At IAM Robotics, we make autonomous robots that navigate and pick items in e-Commerce fulfillment centers. Our robots use computer vision to drive around by themselves, find individual items and bring them to a warehouse worker. I founded IAM Robotics along with my friend Vladimir Altman. We used to work at Carnegie Mellon together at the National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC). Now I’m leading the development of our robots to do new warehouse tasks and to deploy our robots on a larger scale for bigger customers. What are some of the main advantages of using Robots in e-Commerce fulfillment? Our robots allow the fulfillment workers to increase their productivity by not having to walk around the facility to get things. It’s backbreaking labor and most people can’t do it that long. Warehouse workers have a higher injury rate than a lot of other jobs, and our robots really alleviate that pain, by going to collect items for people. That’s the main advantage. It makes people more efficient to work with a team of robots and that allows the warehouse to sell more items. The end result is that the fulfillment company can make more money and keep their people happy. Please give us an overview of a mobile manipulation robot? Mobile manipulation robots combine two capabilities, one is autonomous navigation, the other is autonomous grasping. Our robots have a wheeled mobile base, which is automatically able to navigate from point A to B by using visual sensors that allow them to sense where they are in their environment. The robots also are equipped with an arm and end-effector which allows them to physically pick up different items. The key to making mobile […]