Brightpick debuts $1,900/month Autopicker 2.0 robot

Brightpick Tuesday announced the launch of its latest warehouse robot, Autopicker 2.0. The system arrives a little over two years after its successor, which the Kentucky firm referred to as “the world’s first commercially-available autonomous mobile picking robot for ecommerce and grocery order fulfillment.” That’s a lot of qualifiers, to be sure, but still a sizable market for potential automation.

The sequel is capable of 40% faster picking, while boasting a 20% travel speed increase from the earlier model, per Brightpick. The company is positioning the robot as “human-level speed and versatility,” both of which remain import benchmarks for those looking to automate their shipping infrastructure.

While human speed doesn’t sound especially impressive for a robot, it remains an important benchmark for warehouse owners looking to automate workflows. To get the full effect, you also need to factor in reliability. Here the company is promising an (unspecified) improvement to the 99.5% uptime Brightpick advertised for version 1.0, coupled with increased battery life.

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The company would also surely point out that both speed and reliability are a big step up from the early generation of humanoid robots that’s been hogging all of the spotlight and most of the venture capital for the past few years. Another big point in its favor are the “hundreds” of Autopicks that are already integrated into functioning warehouses across the globe.

Brightpick is still hammering the human comparison home by breaking down different aspects anatomically, writing,

Each robot is equipped with “eyes” (3D vision and LiDAR), “legs” (a mobile base), “hands” (a robotic arm) with a “sense of touch” (advanced force and suction sensors), and a “brain” (Intuition with Physical AI) to perform complex tasks with human-like precision.

The system can also operate in tandem with (real) human workers for “goods-to-person” picking – or with the company’s Giraffe robot, which is capable of reaching 20 foot shelves.

This new generation is rolling out by way of a RaaS (robotics as a service) model, starting at $1,900 per robot, per month.