The Xanthus is the successor of the Pegasus. Since this Pegasus involves even more robots moving around, Amazon had to program even more traffic rules and had to create a new job position of “flow control specialist.” The Xanthus (Coming Soon?) According to Amazon it also has halved the mis-sorting errors. Rather than the tangled mess of conveyor belts that are used for sorting now, the robots allow for much more flexibility in changing the fulfillment center. It will help Amazon become more flexible. The concept itself is not new, and I saw videos from China using a similar sorting technology a few years ago. This can be seen very nicely in the video below. At the chute the conveyor belt simply throws the parcel into the chute. The robot knows which truck the parcel goes to and moves to the corresponding chute. After labeling (called SLAM), a worker places the parcel on the robot. Instead, it is used to sort and transport completed parcels to shipping. This robot has a completely different purpose and does not carry pods. One such an attachment is the X-Sort Drive, basically half a meter of conveyor belt. The Pegasus is also intended to be a generic base for different attachments on top. Below is a video from the manufacturing facility that produces the Pegasus bots. A few hundred Pegasus robots are already working at Amazon. The Pegasus helps to fit more stuff into a warehouse to reduce investment cost. But being close to a large population means everybody else wants to be there too, and competes for the site, which drives prices up. They want more fulfillment centers close to high-population densities to have more deliveries within two hours or even one hour. Amazon states that they especially want to use it close to city centers. However, they may use the Pegasus for new fulfillment centers. It is unlikely that Amazon will replace all original Kivas, since this would be expensive. And, probably most important, it has only half the parts and is cheaper to buy! This means 10cm more space to store stuff! It can also lift 560kg, a bit more than the old one with 450kg. However, it is only 19 cm high, 10cm less than the original Kiva. It performs the same function as the original Kiva and moves pods around. The successor to the original Kiva is named Pegasus after the mythical winged horse. There are also pallet-pods, which are pallets on a frame with legs for the robot to go underneath. It is larger in all dimensions, and therefore the pods are also larger. The principle is similar to it smaller cousin, but Hercules can lift much more weight. Back then it was called DU 3000 as a driving unit with 3000 pound lifting capacity. The Hercules also dates back to the original Kiva Systems development introduced in 2007. Like most of the robots here, it has a speed of 5 km/h (3 miles per hour), or comfortable walking speed. It is 30cm (1 foot) high, weighs around 110kg (250 pounds) and can lift 450kg (1000 pounds). It is about 75cm long and 60 cm wide (2.5 by 2 feet), and fits nicely underneath a pod that measures roughly 1x1m. (See my series on Amazon Fulfillment Centers for more details). This robot moves shelves (called pods) around for faster and cheaper stowing and picking. Since Amazon bought Kiva Systems in 2012, however, Amazon uses the name Amazon Robotics and avoids the term Kiva – even though everybody knows them by that name. The original Kiva is pretty much the robot that Kiva supplied to Amazon, back then called DU 1000 for a driving unit with 1000 pounds lifting capacity. There’s at least six different robots in action. In this post I would like to give you an overview of all the robots at Amazon (that I know of). Turns out, there are more robots in use at Amazon, some for similar tasks, some for something completely different. You surely know this little orange robot at Amazon commonly known as Kiva, which powers many Amazon Fulfillment Centers.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |