Leading Pittsburgh-based maker of autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) for material handling Seegrid Corp. earlier this week announced it had expanded its executive leadership team, creating the role of Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and welcoming Todd Graves to it. The executive leadership expansion supports the company’s continued fast-tracked growth driven by product innovations and growing demand.
In January, the company announced it doubled revenue year-over-year for the second year in a row. The growth reflects increased demand from manufacturing, e-commerce, and logistics companies for automation solutions to address rising pressures on the supply chain, which have been heightened by the COVID-19 pandemic and evolving consumer demands. The company said the safety, flexibility, and reliability of the company’s solutions helped it close a $52 million financing round in September, led by G2VP, which supported the company’s acquisition of Box Robotics, which focuses on 3D perception autonomy with human-like situational awareness for industrial robots. This brings total funding to date of $150 million.
“The incredible growth we recorded last year is a testament to our collective ability to adapt to changing environments—something that our customers can uniquely do when using our automation solutions,” said Jim Rock, Seegrid’s Chief Executive Officer. “Supply-chain disruption surfaced in many different ways in 2020, but our ability to help our customers move materials safely around the world is a constant.”
The company’s automation technology solutions leverage unique navigation technology first brought to market in 2003 by world-renowned roboticist and the company’s Chief Scientist Dr. Hans Moravec. Its software and mobile robots have logged millions of miles in live production environments for global manufacturing, warehousing, and logistics companies.
Graves will lead Seegrid’s engineering and technology development functions, including R&D, new product development, software development, and perception technology. He joins Rock and other executives—Steve Barto, CFO; Tim Spang, COO; and Lay Link, CRO—at the top of the company’s management chain.
“We are at a tipping point as businesses across the world reimagine how to move material, and are turning to Seegrid, a mobile robotics leader with unique insights into material handling, to help do just that,” said Graves.
The company is helping to push that tipping point with a barrage of new offerings in the past month, including an updated Palion Pallet Truck AMR, new autonomous Palion Lift AMR, and Fleet Geek, a cloud-based data analytics software that gives its customers on-demand visibility into their Palion AMR performance across their enterprise. The new Palion name also includes a tow tractor.
The Palion AMR product family represents the company’s newest line of mobile robots for automated material flow aimed at increasing throughput productivity, improving employee and facility safety, reducing labor and operation costs, and driving continuous improvement. The AMRs address major supply-chain challenges with the company’s proprietary navigation technology, which is demonstrated by a robotic track record of millions of autonomous miles driven in live production environments without a single safety incident.
“Now more than ever, our customers need flexible and reliable end-to-end automation solutions to safely move materials in their dynamic environments,” said Jeff Christensen, Seegrid’s Vice President of Product. “Seegrid Palion AMRs are designed specifically to help customers improve safety, increase throughput, and address labor shortages.”
The updated pallet truck, designated Series 8, includes lane-staging capabilities—autonomously identifying, building, and depleting lanes for precise, efficient pick-up and drop-off of palletized goods. It executes hands-free load exchange with an 8000-lb (3630-kg) capacity and 4.0-mph (6.4-km/h) top speed. It now features auto-charge, which removes a costly and dangerous human touchpoint and boosts productivity by automating the scheduling, dispatch, and charging to keep operations running 24/7.
The new Palion Lift AMR autonomous lift truck expands the company’s mobile robotics solutions, automating the movement of palletized goods. It features a maximum 3500-lb (1590-kg) capacity and a 4.0-mph top speed.
“Adding lift to our strong line of horizontal products is a capability most requested by our customers,” said Rock. “The expansion of our industry-leading Palion AMR fleet introduces new automated workflows for manufacturing, e-commerce, and logistics companies that need proven end-to-end automation solutions.”
Palion Lift is equipped with this same navigation technology, using cameras, sophisticated algorithms, and machine learning to safely and reliably navigate in dynamic environments alongside human coworkers. The machine is designed especially for companies that require an automation solution that can haul payloads from one point to another, placing them at heights of up to 6 ft (1.8 m) with little or no changes to their facilities, as well as work directly with other equipment to more quickly and efficiently move materials. It offers a safer, more cost-effective method for pallet movement by freeing up manual lift operators, providing full source-to-destination task automation for low-lift pallet handling processes.
The tow tractor moves multiple loads up to 10,000 lb (4540 kg) and 4.0-mph speed.
In March, Seegrid introduced Fleet Geek data analytics software to complement its AMRs. The cloud-based solution a data-driven view of material flow, providing customers in manufacturing, warehousing, and logistics with insights into AMR performance across their networks of facilities. It tracks and illustrates material flow trends, empowering users with critical insights to optimize workflows, increase utilization, quantify the value of automation, and scale automation initiatives across the enterprise.
“Seegrid is not only a robotics company but also a data analytics company,” said Rock. “Data-driven businesses are best positioned to keep up with fluctuating demands. Fleet Geek provides our customers with intuitive data visualizations and on-demand reporting to make well-informed decisions about their unique workflows to scale their success.”
Fleet Geek increases visibility by showing live project status views of each AMR. Dashboard views help companies ensure their AMR fleets are running effectively across all facilities, shifts, and business applications—meeting key performance indicators while delivering information to quantify the success of the automation investment.
“Industry leaders across the supply chain are not asking ‘if’ or ‘when’ to automate material flow—but rather, how to ensure their automation investments are delivering maximum impact, and how to replicate that success across the enterprise,” said Christensen.
The addition of Fleet Geek analytics software is intended to accelerate automation initiatives in making facilities safer, more productive, and efficient.
To learn more on Seegrid’s Palion AMR fleet and Fleet Geek software, visit seegrid.com/autonomous-mobile-robots and seegrid.com/fleetgeek.
