PickrMate uses a compact robot arm on rail to handle bins. Source: Pickr.AI
The need for fast and accurate order fulfillment has led to numerous automated applications. Pickr.AI has taken a novel approach to piece picking with its PickrMate robot, which performs item recognition, grasping, transportation, and delivery along a wide area.
The Stavanger, Norway-based company said its “3D picking concept” also utilizes vertical space while requiring less warehouse footprint than conventional conveyors, reducing risk and saving money. Pickr.AI promises to provide “friction-free access” to robotics with rack, goods-to-person, vertical lift module, and automated storage and retrieval system (ASRS) integration.
Pickr.AI also aims for “high predictability, continuous operation, and reduced labor dependency” with zone picking and standalone order-picking cells.
Mobile Robot Guide spoke with Roald Valen, CEO of Pickr.AI, about the company’s offerings and approach to small and midsize enterprises (SMEs).
Building a career in robotics and AI
How did you get into robotics and AI? How did your prior experience in R&D and drilling inform your current position as CEO of Pickr.ai?
Roald Valen, CEO, Pickr.AI. Source: LinkedIn
Valen: When ABB made the first painting robot, that got my attention quite early, being a tech nerd.
I started at ABB in 1994 and developed new control systems. I also had the chance to go to Japan to be a representative for our products and competence for the Asian market. I’ve sat at a table facing Toyota and telling them that the reason for hiccups in the system was due to radiation from space.
At the time, the memory chip we used didn’t have auto-refreshing to see if any bit was changing without any commands being given. At the same time, everyone started to release chips that fix that automatically.
Explaining that in a reasonable way to Toyota and how it would never happen again was a good experience regarding how quality matters for a big customer.
I later jumped over to the oil business at drilling equipment provider National Oilwell Varco, or NOV, which delivers drill floors for oil rigs worldwide. That was a completely different ballgame. Then I was given the opportunity to start a startup that was going to make a seabed rig for exploration with robots.
How did you move from marine systems to supply chain robotics?
Valen: Industrial robots are marvelous at repeating what they’ve been told to do, but we couldn’t reach a drilling rig on the seabed with people or rely on remote control, so we worked with Energid Technologies an an access-control system. Energid is now part of Universal Robots.
The work also took me to Stanford University to make a hand to be used for the subsea robots, and to NASA JPL, to meet the Mars rover team about autonomous robots. We needed robots that could slow down rather than go into a critical stop, like the Toyota case. We also had BostonDynamics‘ BigDog as an inspiration because it could handle unexpected situations like being pushed and stay in action.
From 2014 to 2020, I was in different business-development positions in various companies and built up an intelligent automation department in Capgemini, a consultancy. It focused more on robotics process automation, AI, chatbots, and big data.
Then, early investors in Pickr.AI reached out to me and asked me to help lead it because its co-founder and former CEO had left the building. There has been a lot of change, and for me, it’s back to building physical robots again. This is an opportunity to build a tech business that could be an international success.
I’m still a newbie to warehouse automation, but as I say to warehouse customers, I don’t sell robots; I sell improved processes. Selling a robot is like I’m selling you a CPU that you can’t use without a motherboard, a screen, and a keyboard. It can’t help your business unless you have all those things.
Pickr.AI takes on piece-picking challenge
Why has piece picking been so difficult for robotics?
Valen: Amazon said picking was a “holy grail” of automation, but something happened when the latest wave of AI came to play. Suddenly, the algorithms got better, the CPUs were more powerful, and the data was more available.
Computer vision is central to seeing the products to be picked, but the complexity comes with actually gripping something.
The connection to the object or SKU is still a challenge, and there are a lot of different griping mechanisms. The suction cup is currently the most efficient, but if it picks up two items at once or takes more time, that’s not cost-effective.
How is PickrMate different?
Valen: If you look at our picking robots, they are made so they can be transported from the bin to pick from and the bin to pick to on both sides. You need a solution to move goods around — whether it’s a conveyor, an ASRS, or an AMR [autonomous mobile robot] — but there’s little focus on the order bin side of the picking robot.
In a traditional bin-picking system, if I order 10 items, the bin needs to come around 10 times, which is complicated and takes a lot of space for AMRs or snaking conveyors. But we can handle bins with one arm in a gravity-fed rack 25 to 30 sq. m [269 sq. ft.] versus 250 sq. m [2,690 sq. ft.] in space with 500 bins.
My racking costs about $30,000 U.S., while a conveyor setup would be up to $625,000. Eventually, it’s the picking speed or how many picks you do per hour with one or many arms that actually dictates the throughput of all the orders.
Pickr.AI claims its racking takes less space than conventional conveyors. Source: Pickr.AI
Pickr.AI builds its own tools
Many robot providers have shifted from trying handle pose estimation by programming CAD designs for each SKU to saying that they’re not trying to replace the human hand but rather how objects get from one place to another. How do you see the competition?
Valen: Berkshire Grey, RightHand Robotics, and others have tried, but first there’s the risk of implementing robots in your e-commerce process.
Covariant, Plus One Robotics, XYZ Robotics, and Kindred have all made robots that fit into larger systems. They’re like making CPUs for IBM or Apple — they can’t move around.
If you install a robot to do all the picking, if it stops, production stops. The remedy is to have a parallel manual station, but that can also become quite complicated in terms of expense and space if a stop diverts items to manual processing.
How does PickrMate address these challenges?
Valen: Pickr.AI has three different solutions based on our core concept, and we’re actually delivering on the first one. We start with a traditional vertical lift machine on a rail, and then we have a passive racking system.
Empty bins flow to the robot, which can lift them up. These active-order bins are just waiting for items to be picked into. When the order is finished, the robot pushes the bin, ready for the human packer or other packing automation. You have a circulation of empty order bins in and full order bins out.
This is very space-optimized, and passive racks are cheap, so if you want reconfigure them, it’s easy to do. It an also work with any other automation, such as cube storage or AGVs [automated guided vehicles]. We don’t need safety defenses, because the humans are not in the same workspace as the robot.
It’s like a pick wall but with a robot on a rail. Also, for risk mitigation, you can move the robot away at any time and do manual picking, which you can’t do with a stationary robot. You can also use this for nighttime and weekends, and keep manual picking during the day, helping SMEs with labor shortages.
What are some of your technology partners?
Valen: We had a grant from Eureka, a Eurostars program, and then got involved with the University of Eindhoven, the University of Reykjavik, and the University of Stavanger to determine the right form for us. They looked at the mechanical parts on the manipulator itself and how we could bundle a collaborative robot arm with a gantry robot.
We saw that this would not benefit the customer, so we made our own arm. For the picking tool itself, there are many out there, but we wanted to pick from the LOGIMAT shelves.
For order buffering with a robot in the middle of two flow racks, it needed to be very compact and posed a real-time coordination challenge.
PickrMate can handle items from dual flow racks. Source: Pickr.AI
PickrMate to work with wider range of WMS, SKUs
How much integration is necessary for “Robot @ Goods” to work with other processes and warehouse management systems (WMS)?
Valen: WMS integration is a challenge, and we’ve already integrated two types. There’s work to be done, but it isn’t the biggest challenge because we’re developing generic functions, so we can focus on the APIs [application programming interfaces] afterwards.
Since the robot is acting like a human, we’re working with customers on the splitting of responsibilities for bin handling and customer item systems. There’s already software for the ASRS and robot picking arms. Conveyors need software on top of that to make sure the right bins are in the right places. We’re trying to reduce the need to do too much of an IT integration.
What is the range of items that Pickr.ai’s systems can pick? PickrMate was updated in December — were the upgrades in response to customer requests or part of your roadmap?
Valen: Today, we can do up to 2 kg [4.4 lb.] and 25 cm [9.8 in.], and we’re already moving empty bins weighing 3 kg [6.6 lb.]. We know that bigger items means that you have fewer items in storage, and it doesn’t make sense to have only one or two SKUs in a bin.
Our solution isn’t made for sorting multi-SKU bins but to fetch the same types of items. The robots can pick from shelf to shelf — what we call 3D picking — rather than 2D robots picking from the floor.
Also, humans have limitations in reach and height, as are processes built around them. We can stretch 25 m [82 ft.] across, and we’re looking at some 40 m [131 ft.] of rail with two arms.
Global demand still growing
Which markets do you get the most demand from, and where would you like to expand?
Valen: We’re focusing on the Nordics first — Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark. Plus, we have some interest from Germany.
Dry grocery items are a good match, and we have interest from a worldwide meal-kitting company. We’re already delivered a system to Veso Apotek, a veterinary pharmaceutical company. There another business that handles cellphones and accessories.
We’re working with a 3PL [third-party logistics provider] in Sweden that already has an AutoStore ASRS. It said that it’s now possible to capitalize on its existing storage investment and get 24/7 picking without a big investment. We can also help smaller companies that want to grow deliveries at lower risk for SMEs.
We’re showing integrators a functional solution that would work for their customers, and we’re also in dialogue with companies that initially said the system’s not right for them.
What areas are you still working on, and what would you like prospective customers to know about your solutions?
Valen: We’ll have our first reference installations up and running in Q3, so companies can be convinced that our system works.
Some providers pitch ASRS first, but smaller companies should start with picking and packing processes to figure out their capacity, and then they should find the automation that facilitates them.
Pickr.AI has the elegance of a robot on a rail with manipulators that can extend the capacity of human pickers. I think we have something that’s a bit different, and it can actually help businesses get started with robotic picking, which doesn’t need to be complex or scary.