Start-up secures US$32m for robotics to be used in e-commerce warehouses
The company’s signature robot is Ambisort A-Series V3, which reportedly occupies 375ft2 of warehouse space and features an articulated arm equipped with a five-camera vision system and three kinds of suction cups. This arm was designed to pull an assortment of envelopes, plastic bags or lightweight boxes from a bin.
The arm then hands each parcel off to a second robot, which passes over a gantry of mail sacks and chooses the correct one to drop it in, with parcels being sorted according to postcode.
According to Ambi, the Ambisort can process around 400 parcels per hour, which it claims is around three times as fast as humans and less prone to error.
Ambi Robotics both developed the system and the accompanying machine-learning algorithms that allow the robot to recognise each parcel and select the right way to handle it.
The company claims to have deployed 80 of these systems, with ambitions to surpass 100 during the next year.
This recent financing round came from a range of equity firms, namely Tiger Global, Bow Capital and the UK’s Ahren Innovation Capital. E-commerce logistics firm Pitney Bowes has also been announced as both an investor and a customer.