Mujin debuts new robotic case handler for warehouse automation
Robotic solutions provider Mujin has debuted its latest product, QuickBot, a comprehensive, quick-deployment robot cell for case handling. The company says the launch of its warehouse solution is poised to make robotic automation in North American logistics a “no-brainer”.
The first application to become available is a depalletizing solution for automating one of the most arduous tasks of the receiving process in warehouses, and QuickBot is designed with everything needed to solve the application.
Mujin boasts that its QuickBot depalletizer – or QB, as it has been nicknamed – is currently the simplest way to automate a warehouse’s receiving operations with robots. QuickBot is easy to install, doesn’t require any tools, and can be picking cases within a few hours.
QuickBot was presented for the first time in Boston, at the 2022 AMR & Logistics Show, co-located with The Vision Show. After forklifting QuickBot into place at their show booth, Mujin claims that it took less than three hours to have the unit clearing pallets.
Like all of Mujin’s automation solutions, QuickBot is powered by an intelligent robot controller, the MujinController. Utilizing MujinController’s advanced perception and real-time motion planning, Mujin’s depalletizing solutions are capable of on-the-fly case recognition.
This feature allows QuickBot to manage real-world scenarios for both single and mixed-SKU pallet loads without prior ‘teaching’ or information from external systems.
Additionally, Mujin has equipped the QuickBot arm with a universal, heavy payload gripper to meet the physical requirements of general warehouse tasks.
Ross Diankov, Mujin CEO and co-founder, says: “In today’s day and age, a lot is demanded of robot automation systems. They need to be highly reliable, have high throughput, and – of foremost importance – they need to deploy quickly, so that businesses can enjoy the return on investment from day one.
“With the arrival of QuickBot, you will be experiencing the start of a new revolution in the next several years. You will see a lot more of these systems in warehouses, working better, faster, and improving working conditions.”
To show how easily QuickBot integrates into various material handling systems, at their AMR & Logistics Show exhibit, Mujin, alongside integration partner Robex, paired their warehouse QB with a MiR AMR, which managed the pallet handling for the depalletizing workstation.
Also at the conference, Mujin’s director of sales, Josh Cloer, joined a feature speaking panel with Robex’s vice president of mobile robotics, Matt Charles, and Formic’s vice president of sales, Jack Kaumo, where Mujin and Formic announced a partnership that will make QuickBot available through the robots as a service model.
That means a business can bypass the typical capital expense and have QuickBot in its warehouse, unloading pallets for around $20 per hour, and only pay while it is running.
Mujin says QuickBot has numerous features and benefits:
- Easily uncrates and can be transported via forklift to the installation location
- Everything is pre-installed on a large metal baseplate, so no drilling is required
- Safety system is pre-installed and ready-to-go upon arrival
- Pneumatically driven, telescoping vision stand makes it easy to raise the vision system to the proper height
- Conveyor is on a rail, with adjustable height, and pulls out to connect to existing conveyor
- No system-level integration is needed to operate