Amazon Robotics, formerly Kiva Systems, is a Massachusetts-based company that manufactures mobile robotic fulfillment systems. It is a subsidiary company of

Amazon.com Amazon.com, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational technology company focusing on e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. It has been referred to as "one of the most influential economi ...

and its

automated storage and retrieval system An automated storage and retrieval system (ASRS or AS/RS) consists of a variety of computer-controlled systems for automatically placing and retrieving loads from defined storage locations. Automated storage and retrieval systems (AS/RS) are ty ...

s were previously used by companies including The Gap,

Walgreens Walgreen Company, d/b/a Walgreens, is an American company that operates the second-largest pharmacy store chain in the United States behind CVS Health. It specializes in filling prescriptions, health and wellness products, health information, a ...

, Staples,

Gilt Groupe Gilt is an online shopping and lifestyle website based in the United States, launched in 2007. On January 7, 2016, The company was sold to Hudson's Bay Company for approximately $250 million. Prior to the Hudson’s Bay acquisition, sales were ex ...

Office Depot The ODP Corporation is an American office supply holding company headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida. The company has combined annual sales of approximately $11 billion, and employs about 38,000 associates with businesses in the United States. ...

Crate & Barrel Euromarket Designs Inc., doing business as Crate & Barrel (stylized as Crate&Barrel), is an international furniture and home décor retail store headquartered in Northbrook, Illinois. They employ 8200 employees across over 100 stores in the Uni ...

, and Saks 5th Avenue. After those contracts ran out, Amazon did not renew them and Kiva's assets now work only for Amazon's warehouses.

History

After working on the business process team at

Webvan Webvan was a dot-com company and grocery business that filed for bankruptcy in 2001 after 3 years of operation. It was headquartered in Foster City, California, United States. It delivered products to customers' homes within a 30-minute window o ...

, Mick Mountz concluded that the company's downfall was due to the inflexibility of existing material handling systems and the high cost of order fulfillment. These challenges inspired Mountz to create a method to pick, pack, and ship orders through a system that could deliver any item to any operator at any time. To accomplish his vision, Mountz sought help from Peter Wurman and Raffaello D'Andrea. In 2003, Mountz became the founder and CEO of Kiva Systems, through his partnership with co-founders Wurman and D'Andrea.

Overview

Traditionally, goods are moved around a distribution center using a

conveyor system A conveyor system is a common piece of mechanical handling equipment that moves materials from one location to another. Conveyors are especially useful in applications involving the transport of heavy or bulky materials. Conveyor systems allow ...

or by human-operated machines (such as

forklifts A forklift (also called lift truck, jitney, hi-lo, fork truck, fork hoist, and forklift truck) is a powered industrial truck used to lift and move materials over short distances. The forklift was developed in the early 20th century by various ...

). In Kiva's approach, items are stored in portable storage units. When an order is entered into the Kiva

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases span ...

system, the software locates the closest automated guided vehicle (bot) to the item and directs it to retrieve it. The mobile

robots" \n\n\n\n\nThe robots exclusion standard, also known as the robots exclusion protocol or simply robots.txt, is a standard used by websites to indicate to visiting web crawlers and other web robots which portions of the site they are allowed to visi ...

navigate around the warehouse by following a series of computerized bar-code stickers on the floor. Each drive unit has a sensor that prevents it from colliding with others. When the drive unit reaches the target location, it slides underneath the pod and lifts it off the ground through a corkscrew action. The robot then carries the pod to the specified human operator to pick up the items. Kiva sold systems based on two different robot models. The smaller model was approximately 2 feet by 2.5 feet, 18 inches high, and capable of lifting 1,000 pounds. The larger model was capable of carrying a

pallet A pallet (also called a skid) is a flat transport structure, which supports goods in a stable fashion while being lifted by a forklift, a pallet jack, a front loader, a jacking device, or an erect crane. A pallet is the structural foundat ...

with loads as heavy as 3,000 pounds. Both were a distinctive orange color. The maximum velocity of the robots was 1.3 meters per second. The mobile bots were battery-powered and need to be recharged every hour for five minutes. The system is considered much more efficient and accurate than the traditional method of having human workers traveling around the warehouse locating and picking items.

Acquisition by Amazon

In March 2012,

acquired Kiva Systems for $775 million. At the time, this was Amazon's second-largest acquisition in its history. Since the acquisition by Amazon, Kiva has remained silent. The company has not announced any new Kiva customers and has stopped its marketing activities. Most of Kiva's sales staff have departed, though the company continues to hire in the engineering and manufacturing departments. Industry observers speculate that Amazon is focusing on internal operations and is not interested in sharing the technology with competitors. In August 2015, the company officially changed its name from Kiva Systems LLC to Amazon Robotics LLC. As of June 2019, Amazon had more than 200,000 robots working in their warehouses. In July 2022, Amazon unveiled its first-ever autonomous mobile robot (AMR) Proteus.

References

External links

Amazon Robotics
official website
Demonstration video

Exclusive From Gilt Groupe: Flash Sales, Flash Delivery, Apparel Magazine

"Disruptive By Design: Freakin' Cool Robots", Wired Magazine

* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20090911111042/http://www.robotspodcast.com/podcast/2008/10/robots-warehouse-robots.html Robots: Warehouse Robots podcast
Staples Robotic Retrievers
by

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...

{{Amazon Robotics companies of the United States Warehouses Amazon (company) acquisitions

History

Overview

Acquisition by Amazon

See also

References

External links