When you watch a Carter Pro robot move through the aisles of the demo warehouse at Robust AI's San Carlos, Calif., headquarters, you immediately notice two things. The first is a standardized, modular, prefabricated shelving unit. Wire frames are familiar to anyone who has spent time in a warehouse, and that's certainly by design.
The second is not the visible elements of the wheeled robot itself, but how humans in the space interact with their automated colleagues. As Carter patrols the halls, a burly employee picks it up and moves it. It sounds like a small difference, but in a world where humans and robots work together, it's worth noting.
Safety issues are not raised regularly enough in articles covering the proliferation of humanoid robots in the workplace. Although some companies have moved on from the days of hiding industrial weapons in safety cages, there are always risks when humans work with autonomously moving metal systems. Electric forklifts have been around since the 1930s and still cause workplace injuries on a regular basis.
The ability to manually move robots could be an important part of implementing industrial robot systems in the future. For Carter, that doesn't mean becoming just a passive device, but sensing the forces applied to it and adjusting accordingly. There's also a bright orange handlebar for one-handed control. This is a surprisingly complex challenge when creating such a system.
Given the pedigree of its founders, it's no surprise that a collaborative nature is a core tenet of the system. Prior to Robust, CTO Rodney Brooks founded Rethink Robotics. This also centered around human-robot interaction (HRI). A lot of column space has been devoted to a future in which humanoids and other robots completely replace human robots, but that's a distant vision at best.
For the time being, humans and robots will be working in parallel, so it is important to ensure that they can do so safely.
Another differentiator for Carter, Brooks was quick to point out, is that it uses a camera rather than a lidar. This is a move that is becoming increasingly popular among autonomous mobile robot (AMR) manufacturers. While pricing is a big part of that puzzle, there are other reasons why LIDAR may not be the best solution in a warehouse environment.
Many partners have tested early versions of the system prior to releasing production models. “The first product rolled off the production line in just over a week,” Brooks told TechCrunch. Although DHL is the first major customer announced, there's no doubt that the global logistics company has more than enough work to keep the robotics startup busy for the next decade, but Brooks said Robust said the company is intentionally diversifying its customer portfolio.
“We don't just do business with DHL,” he explains. “Walmart had a lot of robot companies, but then they closed down and now those robot companies are struggling. We need to reach a broader customer base, so we decided to hire DHL. has made it clear that we will only deliver a certain percentage of the robots we produce.”