In this episode, we catch up with Joyce Sidopoulos and Martia McGinn from MassRobotics to learn about the upcoming MassRobotics Accelerator program. Then later in the show, we feature an interview with Jan Zizka, CEO of Brightpick, and learn about the company’s new Autopicker system for eaches picking using mobile manipulators.
Episode timeline
17:22 Joyce Sidopoulos and Martia McGinn from MassRobotics: What is the MassRobotics Accelerator program?
52:11 Featured interview: Jan Zizka, CEO of Brightpick
News of the week
- Robotics companies raised $1.8B in September 2023
- Two recent stories about Boston Dynamics’ Spot were noteworthy:
- A video showed the quadruped robot using ChatGPT to enable various “personalities” as a tour guide. This explored how integrating generative AI with robotics might improve human-machine interaction.
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- The second item was about Spot being deployed in Japan to inspect the Fukushima nuclear plant during decommissioning. This is dangerous work, and a platform like Spot enables human workers to remain in safe parts of the facility while maneuvering the robots throughout the areas that contain dangerous levels of radiation
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Featured guest
Our featured guest this week is Jan Zizka, co-founder and CEO of Photoneo, the parent company of Brightpick. He discusses the capabilities and design of the Brightpick fulfillment system, which uses Photoneo 3D imaging cameras to identify items in bulk as they are pulled from totes or boxes stored on warehouse shelves.
Brightpick’s innovation is to employ a mobile manipulator that can pull a tote from a warehouse shelf and then acquire an individual SKU from the tote for a specific customer order before returning the bulk storage tote back to its inventory location.
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