Category: Latest News(HOMEPAGE)

Fetch Robotics Secures Funding for Market-Leading Cloud Robotics Solution

Fetch Robotics Secures Funding to Meet Rapidly Increasing Demand for Its Market-Leading Cloud Robotics Solution

On-Demand Automation Solution Gaining Mainstream Adoption with Leading Logistics Providers

SAN JOSE, Calif. – July 23, 2019 – Fetch Robotics, the pioneer of on-demand automation, today announced a Series C round of funding in the amount of $46 million. The round was led by Fort Ross Ventures, with additional participation from CEAS Investments, Redwood Technologies, TransLink Capital and Zebra Ventures.  All existing investors – O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, Shasta Ventures, Softbank Capital and Sway Ventures – also participated in this round. Fetch Robotics now has raised $94 million to date. The funding will be used for international expansion, to meet accelerating customer demand, and for ongoing research and development.

“Customers have responded enthusiastically to our unique Cloud Robotics solution, and we’re responding by securing the funds we need to continue growing and enhancing our offerings,” said Melonee Wise, CEO of Fetch Robotics. “The competitive pressures for excellence in logistics have never been greater. Our Autonomous Mobile Robots and cloud platform enables our customers to meet their customers’ demands while meeting their own financial objectives.”

While supply chain automation isn’t new to logistics or manufacturing, what is new is the need for speed – to produce, transport, package, ship, deliver and adapt – at a pace never before seen. At the same time, the labor shortages that plague e-commerce operations are also impacting distribution, fulfillment and manufacturing facilities. In a recent survey, the number one concern among logistics industry leaders was “hiring qualified workers,[1]” and an additional survey[2] reported that manufacturing executives are worried that around 60% of current open positions in their businesses are unfilled due to lack of skilled workers. It’s therefore no wonder that warehouse and manufacturing operators are struggling to find solutions that let them meet the demanding workload.

One such company is Universal Logistics Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: ULH), a full-service provider of customized transportation and logistics solutions. With headquarters in Michigan, Universal provides value-added logistics services for Fortune 500 manufacturers and retailers, including several of the top automotive and transportation OEMs. Universal recently deployed the Fetch Cloud Robotics Platform in its one million square-foot Smyrna, TN logistics facility which serves the nearby Nissan Motors plant, the largest auto manufacturing facility in North America.

Just outside of Nashville, the greater metropolitan area where Smyrna resides ranks among the lowest overall unemployment rates in the United States at 2.4%.[3] This makes it especially difficult to meet the demand for logistics workers and leads to chronic under-staffing situations. As a result, Universal has a pressing need for flexible, reliable and cost-effective automation solutions that can handle low-level tasks – like pushing carts with parts and sub-assemblies over long distances.  

“In Smyrna as in many markets we serve, we face chronic labor shortages, at times in excess of 10% of our required staff, which puts significant pressure on everyone from the workers on the floor to senior management,” according to Universal CEO Jeff Rogers. “The Fetch Robotics system provides an answer to our problem. Because the system installs so quickly – we had it fully operational in less than a week – we’re able to boost output and manage our costs. And our workers like it because the robots take on the less interesting, more laborious tasks. With Fetch, our employees can focus on the revenue-generating tasks that are more fulfilling and more valuable.”

In the Smyrna facility, Universal is using 10 Fetch CartConnect™ robots in conjunction with 40 carts to automate several key processes in the warehouse. This enables them to meet their targets while reducing the near continuous need to ask associates to work overtime. By opting for the Fetch Robots-as-a-Service (RaaS) monthly fee model, Universal has been able to minimize their upfront investment and realize a compelling ROI. 

“Thanks to the short time from delivery to operation and the pay-as-you go approach, we’ve seen an immediate financial benefit from the Fetch deployment,” said Lee Weisenberger, Managing Director of IT at Universal. “This is a model we can easily roll out to many additional facilities.”

The Fetch Cloud Robotics Platform provides the market’s only cloud-driven Autonomous Mobile Robot (AMR) solution that addresses material handling and data collection for warehousing and intralogistics environments. Cloud robotics is revolutionizing automation by bringing the kind of speed, agility and cost advantages that cloud computing brought to IT.  

“We’ve had great success investing in companies that are using unique software platforms to transform large, global industries, and so Fetch Robotics is a natural addition to our portfolio,” said Anurag Chandra, Venture Partner at Fort Ross Ventures. “Fetch’s cloud-first approach enables on-demand automation, which we believe will transform logistics, manufacturing, retail and other industries in the U.S. and internationally.  We’re delighted to be a part of the Fetch team.”

“Flexibility in operations is a top priority for warehouse operators today,” said John Santagate, Research Director at IDC.  “Traditional automation technology lacks the ability for rapid deployment, scalability, and flexibility that modern robotics are enabling. On top of the physical element of modern robotics, development of cloud-based applications to enable robotics has greatly enhanced the ability to rapidly and efficiently deploy robotics at scale.  The cloud robotics approach at Fetch is something that is enabling warehouses to rapidly realize the benefits of robotics and making it easier for companies to deploy and use robots in their operation.”

Fetch customers include leading, global companies in third-party logistics (3PL), manufacturing, and distribution. Within the past year, the company has continued to receive industry accolades including the following:

● Named as a Leader in IDC MarketScape for Autonomous Mobile Robots for General Warehouse Automation (Doc# US44843019, May 2019)
● Recognized by Fast Company in the category of Most Innovative Company – Robotics
● Named as a Technology Pioneer by the World Economics Forum
● Awarded the AI Breakthrough Award for Best Overall Robotics company
● Named to The Supply & Demand Chain Executive 100 Top Supply Chain Transformations (SDCE 100)

For more information on Universal, please visit www.universallogistics.com.

About Fetch Robotics
Fetch Robotics is an award-winning intralogistics automation company headquartered in Silicon Valley. By combining mobile robotics with the power of the cloud, the Fetch Cloud Robotics Platform provides on-demand automation solutions for material handling and inventory management, with the power to find, track, and move almost anything in any facility. Fetch Robotics’ solutions and services are deployed in leading distribution, fulfillment, and manufacturing centers around the world, augmenting workforces to drive increased efficiency and productivity. For more information, please visit www.fetchrobotics.com or follow the company on Twitter @FetchRobotics.

Media Contact
Fetch Robotics
Tim Smith, 415-350-3019
comms@fetchrobotics.com

¹https://www.mhi.org/publications/report
² https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/manufacturing/articles/future-of-manufacturing-skills-gap-study.htm
³ https://www.bls.gov/web/metro/laummtrk.htm

Learn more about the CartConnect AMR system by Fetch Robotics

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Read the IDC Spotlight report on how Cloud Robotics increases productivity

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Fetch Robotics Garners Two More Industry Awards

Fetch Robotics Garners Two More Industry Awards

Fetch Robotics has focused on solving some of the most pressing problems in the supply chain with our combination of Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) and on-demand automation since 2014. And, people continue to take notice. We are proud to announce that Fetch is the recipient of two additional awards this month:

  • The AI Breakthrough Award for Best Overall Robotics company, which was awarded by Tech Breakthrough, a leading market intelligence and recognition platform for global technology innovation and leadership.
  • The Supply & Demand Chain Executive 100 Top Supply Chain Transformations (SDCE 100), awarded by Supply & Demand Chain Executive Magazine

 The SDCE 100 award spotlights successful and innovative transformation projects that deliver bottom-line value to small, medium and large enterprises across the range of supply chain functions. This is the second year in a row that Fetch is featured in the list. This year, Fetch was recognized based on our work with Framebridge, an online custom framing company. 

Framebridge deployed Fetch Robotics’ Cloud Robotics Platform and Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) resulting in a 70% improvement in operational efficiency of employees’ transporting items. Building custom frames involves the movement of frame components from one area of production to another for matting, framing and finishing the custom art. Throughout the course of the day, this workflow required an employee to transport the material and travel up to forty round trips between stations.  Now, the framed artwork is automatically picked up by one of Fetch’s CartConnect robots, which self-navigates to and from the matting, framing and finishing stations. Framebridge’s highly trained artisans now spend more time building, rather than transporting, parts.

The TagSurveyor robot provides fully automatic, physical inventory counts of customer-owned artwork in the expansive warehouse. Framebridge attaches a unique RFID tag to each item received. TagSurveyor self-drives inside a designated area in the warehouse, reads the RFID tag, and sends location-based coordinates to Fetch’s cloud software. Protecting and tracking these precious pieces is central to all operational decisions at Framebridge.  Learn more about Framebridge in our case study that can be found here. 

The AI Breakthrough Awards recognize the top companies, technologies and products in Artificial Intelligence. Fetch was named the Best Overall Robotics Company for our use of AI in creating robots that work with people and maneuver in a “human” way. Traditionally, robotics engineers create motion-planning algorithms, which focus purely on optimization and efficiency. In these traditional cases, the robot perceives all obstacles the same. Without further semantic understanding of the environment, these algorithms can lead to jerky, unpredictable, and unnatural movements of the robot leading to a perception that the robot is unaware of its surroundings. Fetch is using AI and deep learning in order for our robots to become smarter and more aware of the environments that they share with people.

 Our team continues to work tirelessly on behalf of our customers who have adopted the complete line of Fetch AMRs to safely work alongside employees and help the companies and employees become more efficient.

Learn More About TagSurveyor 〉

Download the IDC Spotlight Report on Cloud Robotics 〉

Fetch Robotics Named As a Leader In IDC MarketScape Report

Fetch Robotics Named As a Leader In IDC MarketScape for Autonomous Mobile Robots for General Warehouse Automation

Report Recognizes Fetch as an AMR Leader Owing to Cloud Robotics Expertise, Broad Product Portfolio, Ease of Integration

SAN JOSE, Calif. — May 29, 2019 — Fetch Robotics, the pioneer of on-demand automation, today announced that it has been named as a Leader by industry analyst group IDC in the IDC MarketScape assessment of eight key vendors providing Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) for the general automation market.

The “IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Autonomous Mobile Robots for General Warehouse Automation 2019 Vendor Assessment” says “. … companies that are looking for a long-term partner across multiple dimensions of material movement automation and a road map for digital transformation will find Fetch as a company with both the ability to deliver in the near term and the vision to deliver on the future-state vision.”

“Historically, automation projects would take many months or even years to implement the technology,” according to John Santagate, Research Director, IDC. “Now, vendors like Fetch are delivering autonomous mobile robots for flexible automation that can be deployed in hours. Fetch’s cloud first approach, from the software side, is certainly an enabler of rapid deployment, one customer reference even indicated that they were able to unbox a Fetch robot at 9 a.m. and were using it in production workflows by 1 p.m. that same afternoon.”

“It is extremely gratifying to be recognized by the IDC MarketScape as a Leader in the AMR market,” said Melonee Wise, CEO of Fetch Robotics. “This is quite an honor for Fetch and a tribute to our customers, partners, and employees who have all helped to make this happen.”

Fetch Robotics has become successful in the AMR industry owing to it’s combination of:

Cloud Robotics Expertise
Fetch Robotics provides the market’s only cloud-driven AMR solution that addresses material handling and data collection for warehousing, manufacturing facilities, and intralogistics environments. Fetch’s cloud-first approach means that AMRs are deployed in a matter of hours.

Broad Product Portfolio
Material handling is not a one-size-fits-all solution, so Fetch offers the industry’s broadest selection of AMRs. These AMRs deploy and redeploy in hours and move anything from parts to pallets in warehouses, factories, and distribution centers — all while working safely alongside people, forklifts, and other material handling equipment.

Integration Options
Fetch is unique in that it can be up and running in a matter of hours without any need for integration, but the technology is also designed to easily integrate as needed with operational and decision support systems.

To learn more about how Cloud Robotics delivers on-demand automation for warehouses and manufacturing, download: https://info.fetchrobotics.com/idc-cloud-robotics-spotlight

Source: IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Autonomous Mobile Robots for General Warehouse Automation 2019 Vendor Assessment, Doc # US44843019, May 2019

About IDC MarketScape
IDC MarketScape vendor assessment model is designed to provide an overview of the competitive fitness of ICT (information and communications technology) suppliers in a given market. The research methodology utilizes a rigorous scoring methodology based on both qualitative and quantitative criteria that results in a single graphical illustration of each vendor’s position within a given market. IDC MarketScape provides a clear framework in which the product and service offerings, capabilities and strategies, and current and future market success factors of IT and telecommunications vendors can be meaningfully compared. The framework also provides technology buyers with a 360-degree assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of current and prospective vendors.

About Fetch Robotics
Fetch Robotics is an award-winning intralogistics automation company headquartered in Silicon Valley. We provide innovative, on-demand warehouse automation solutions for material handling and inventory management by combining mobile robotics with the power of the cloud to find, track, and move almost anything in any facility. Fetch Robotics’ solutions and services are deployed in leading distribution, fulfillment, and manufacturing centers around the world, augmenting workforces to drive increased efficiency and productivity. For more information, please visit https://www.fetchrobotics.com or follow the company on Twitter @FetchRobotics.

Discover more about the Fetch Cloud Robotics Platform

Winner Announced of Fetch Robotics FetchIt! Mobile Manipulation Challenge

Winner of Fetch Robotics FetchIt! Challenge Executes Complex Manufacturing Tasks Using Autonomous Mobile Robotic Arm

Georgia Institute of Technology Awarded Prize Package Worth Over $150K In Inaugural Contest Hosted at IEEE Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)

SAN JOSE, Calif. — May 22 2019 — Fetch Robotics, the pioneer of on-demand automation, today announced the results of the inaugural FetchIt! Mobile Manipulation Challenge. The competition was designed to advance the state of technology for applying mobile manipulators, which are autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) fitted with robotic arms, for use in manufacturing and related applications. The FetchIt! Challenge attracted teams from leading universities, who were tasked with using a Fetch Mobile Manipulator robot to navigate to stations in a work cell where they picked up items with the arm, inserted them into a machining tool, placed the machined items into kits, transported the finished kits to an inspection station, and then to a drop-off location. This is the first competition that encompasses the full range of activities that are commonly found in manufacturing environments.

Georgia Tech was awarded first prize for successfully assembling three kits in thirty-nine minutes, earning a prize package that included a Fetch Mobile Manipulation Research Robot – a $100K value – along with additional prizes from co-sponsors EandM, SCHUNK GmbH and SICK AG.  More information on the FetchIt! Challenge is available here.

FetchIt! Challenge participants included:

  • Team Columbia: Columbia University, led by Professor Peter K. Allen, PhD, and Neil Chen
  • Team DeRAILers: The Georgia Institute of Technology, led by Associate Professor Sonia Chernova, PhD and David Kent
  • Team RoboHawks: The University of Massachusetts Lowell, led by Professor Holly Yanco, PhD, Assistant Professor Reza Ahmadzadeh, PhD and Zhao Han
  • Team Fido: Independent Competitors, Thomas Butterworth and Ben Jarvhi

Autonomous mobile robots are seeing rapid adoption in multiple applications, particularly for material movement tasks in warehouses and factories. This has fueled growing interest in using AMRs equipped with robotic arms – so called Mobile Manipulators – for applications that combine autonomous transport with robotic arms that can grasp and manipulate objects. While conceptually simple, combining autonomous mobility with robotic arm activity is extremely challenging, requiring complex interaction between the robot navigation, machine vision, arm operation and safety systems.

The FetchIt! competition focused on teams autonomously completing combined manipulation and navigation tasks. The goal was to assemble a kit from six objects obtained from stations around the designated arena. Designed to mimic a common machine-tending process in manufacturing, the objects were picked from bins and then placed in a kit and transported to a drop-off location. All teams used a stock Fetch Mobile Manipulator, which is the most widely deployed mobile manipulation robot, deployed at over fifty of the world’s leading academic and commercial robotic research centers.

“I’d like to congratulate all the teams for their accomplishments during the course of this challenge,” according to Russell Toris, Director of Robotics at Fetch Robotics. “When setting out to create this challenge, we knew we wanted to keep it grounded to a real-word scenario. Interacting with machinery that is designed to be used by humans is no easy task. Piece-picking, kitting, and countless other tasks are going to require state-of-the-art perception, motion planning, navigation, and safety all seamlessly working together. The teams’ performance this week indicate that they represent some of the world’s leading experts in these skills.”

1st Place: Team DeRAILers, Georgia Tech 

First prize winners Team DeRAILERs took home a Fetch Mobile Manipulation Research Robot, along with 7,000 Schunk Bucks. “We’re very excited to have won the FetchIt! challenge,” said Georgia Tech’s Sonia Chernova. “It has allowed us to validate our research code in a complex domain. We can’t wait to continue our work with our newest Fetch robot.”

2nd Place: Team RoboHawks, University of Massachusetts Lowell

A great effort from second place Team Robohawks, who won a MRS1000 4-layer LiDAR sensor and a TiM561 LiDAR laser scanner provided by SICK and EandM, along with 5,000 Schunk Bucks. Holly Yanco from UMass Lowell added: “Everyone from Fetch has been helpful and very encouraging. This has been an amazing experience and the tasks used for the competition form a great basis for our ONR MURI research.”

Platform for Robotic Research
Designed to work with the Robot Operating System (ROS) for the greatest common usability and familiarity, the Fetch Mobile Manipulator and the Freight Mobile Robot Base are  robotics platforms used by researchers around the world to collaborate and share research. The Fetch Mobile Manipulator provides an affordable, fully-integrated standard platform for mobile manipulation research that has been purposefully designed for typical human working environments. The Fetch Research Robot is being used by researchers and innovators at the world’s most advanced organizations, including Arizona State University, Carnegie Mellon University, Google, Northeastern University, OpenAI, Shenzen University, Softbank, University of Michigan, University of North Carolina-Charlotte, University of Sydney, University of Tokyo, Virginia Tech and more.

About Fetch Robotics
Fetch Robotics is an award-winning intralogistics automation company headquartered in Silicon Valley. We provide innovative, on-demand warehouse automation solutions for material handling and inventory management by combining mobile robotics with the power of the cloud to find, track, and move almost anything in any facility. Fetch Robotics’ solutions and services are deployed in leading distribution, fulfillment, and manufacturing centers around the world, augmenting workforces to drive increased efficiency and productivity. For more information, please visit https://www.fetchrobotics.com or follow the company on Twitter @FetchRobotics.

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