IAM Robotics Takes on Automated Warehouse Picking

There's a small but growing handful of robotics companies trying to make it in the warehouse market with systems that work with humans on order fulfillment. Generally, we're talking about clever wheeled platforms that can autonomously deliver goods from one place to another, while humans continue do the most challenging part: picking items off of shelves. There's a lot of value here, since using robots to move stuff frees up humans to spend more of their time picking. Ideally, however, you'd have the robot doing the picking as well, but this is a very difficult problem in terms of sensing, motion planning, and manipulation. And getting a robot do pick reliably at a speed that could make it a viable human replacement is more difficult still.