The bots at Pittsburgh’s Lightfoot Inc. not only make light work of heavy lifting, they have a mind of their own.
The Ambridge-based company combines track-based robots with sophisticated software that enables the bots to pick and choose cases of product stacked on large palettes in the warehouse and send them out for delivery. It’s work typically done by hand on an overnight shift, so the savings to companies is significant in terms of employee turnover, workplace injuries and breakage.
“Depalletizers in a manufacturing setting use a fixed base robot to blindly stack the same few products," explains Matt Beck, co-founder and vice president of operations. "Those systems don’t have vision or a sense of awareness to adapt to a pallet being dropped off. Our robots have more of a mind, an awareness of the environment. And one line with a pair of robots can access 500 or more different pallets of products.”
Beck and Rick Brown founded Lightfoot in 2004. The technology went through several years of prototype development before Lightfoot incorporated in 2006. A partnership with Pittsburgh-based global company, Lucas Systems, a leading provider of voice-directed applications for distribution centers also owned by Brown, enables workers to communicate with the bots.
Lightfoot will be installed this summer at the National Distributing Company in Atlanta, affiliates of the second largest distributor of wine and spirits in the country. The system is designed to work within any food, beverage, medical supply and paper product industry, Beck says.
Writer: Debra Smit
Source: Matt Beck, Lightfoot Inc.
Image courtesy Lightfoot Inc.