Filling the void left by Kiva’s 2012 acquisition by Amazon

robohub.org

82 points·robofenix··11 comments

Note: the title should say "Kiva Systems", the microfinance 501 org "Kiva" was not purchased by amazon.

Thank you, I felt really confused when I saw the title but as usual, I read comments here before clicking the link.

Biased here! But the only option on their list of alternatives that are drop-in replacements for the Kiva System with great updates for next-gen system seems like Otto (http://www.ottomotors.com/vehicles). Great improvement by removing the need for infrastructure changes (all cartography is onboard and centrally maintained).

That's not strictly true. The Locus system isn't a Kiva drop-in, it's a next-gen system as well.

Locus seems to be missing the big heavy lifter that Otto has?

They're just targeting different markets. Otto is largely targeting manufacturing, Locus is targeting e-commerce and fulfillment more. The morphology of the robots follows from that.

RoboCV (http://robocv.com/), a pretty good Russian company is missing from the list. These are the same guys who were participants of Google Lunar X Prize but aborted midway due to lack of funding.

Amazon also got some cool robotic know-how when it acquired Quidsi (aka Diapers.com, Soap.com, etc): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6NK0zexl4s

It looks to me like those are Kiva robots.

Interestingly, the video you posted basically explains how they're using Kiva robots.

yep, those Are Kiva robots.

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