AI Supply Chain BriefAI and robotics: supply chain stories
Every AI Supply Chain Brief story tagged “robotics”, newest first (3).
Robots are sorting Zalando's fashion returns without item-by-item training
Sereact's two-armed robots are now sorting Zalando returns in live operations at CEVA Logistics sites in Greven, Germany, and Świebodzin, Poland. Sereact says its Cortex software lets the robots pick, identify and sort crumpled items they've never seen, without per-product setup or a fixed item list. The system is sold as robotics-as-a-service, and staff move to supervising stations, handling exceptions and checking quality. The companies call it the first step toward automating returns across Europe.
Read the story →So whatReturns are among the hardest jobs to automate, so this is a useful test case.
Ultra raises $50M to lease packing robots to warehouses by the month
Brooklyn-based Ultra closed a $50M Series A led by Framework Ventures, bringing total funding to $62M. It installs its OP1 packing robots at warehouses and third-party logistics sites for an upfront integration fee plus a monthly service fee, rather than a big capital purchase. The company says its robots have packed over 500,000 orders, and it relies on Physical Intelligence for the AI models that run them.
Read the story →So whatRobots-as-a-service turns automation into an operating expense you can pilot.
Physical Intelligence opens its robot models to outside developers
Physical Intelligence launched a waitlisted beta of its Pi API on October 13. Teams upload their own robot data, fine-tune the company's general-purpose models on its managed infrastructure, and run them through a hosted service. Robots-as-a-service provider Formic, which says 150 factories use its robots, is an early partner. The company noted that network connectivity was a challenge in some early cloud-run deployments.
Read the story →So whatGeneral-purpose robot AI is becoming something you rent, not build.
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