Amazon is all about robots and on a quest to find the best robot for its warehouse fulfillment picking and packing needs. To make that happen, the mega e-tailer is reaching out to other robot makers out there to find what the company's in-house robot-making developers haven't been able to develop.
Amazon is running a contest and the robot that scores the most points will get the big prize: $25,000. The online retailer has been relying on robotic technology for a while and even bought a mobile robot company, Kiva Systems, in 2012.
The Kiva robots have not, however, made what Amazon is hoping to put in place: a robot that can perform picking and packing duties with the speed and intelligence of a human warehouse worker.
About 30 teams are signed up for the robot challenge, taking place in May at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation. The challenge involves robot participants picking, carrying and packing a wide variety of 25 products that Amazon distributes.
"We tried to pick out a variety of different products that were representative of our catalogue and that pose different kinds of grasping challenges," explained Pete Wurman, chief technology officer of Kiva Systems. "Like plastic wrap; difficult-to-grab little dog toys; things you don't want to crush, like the Oreos."
Robots will earn points for successful product selection (choosing Oreos rather than Cheez-Its) and lose points for making mistakes (choosing Cheez-Its when a packing slip calls for Oreos), as well as the care aspect in packing (breakage will bring deductions).
The participating robotics teams, based in academic universities, have either developed their robots from scratch or have developed them using third-party technology.
One of the biggest robotic development hurdles has been designing the perfect grip, but that challenge may have been solved by a Dublin, Ireland college robotics team whose robot, Robbie, can grab, hold and release objects using an internal rubber balloon that is filled with coffee granules.
Whether that's enough to put Robbie in the winner's circle and put $25,000 in its creators' hands will only be decided at the contest.
Here's a look at what one Colorado academic team has developed:
