Black-I Robotics to showcase ‘breakthrough’ AI-based robot at Modex
Black-I Robotics will be participating in the premier materials handling industrial trade show, Modex, March 11-14, in Atlanta, the company’s CEO Brian Hart has announced.
Some 45,000 supply chain executives and staff attend the show, which features more than a thousand exhibitors showcasing their products for the logistics and manufacturing industries.
Black-I will be demonstrating its “revolutionary” AI-based Fullscope mobile heavy lift robot in the Orbis Corporation booth at the center of the show – B2809 – according to Hart.
Hart says: “Modex is the biggest supply chain and manufacturing event of 2024.
“We’re delighted to partner with ORBIS, an international leader in reusable packaging, as we both work to create a more economical and sustainable supply chain.”
Black-I Robotics introduced the first version of its Fullscope robot at Modex in 2022. It was a hit, especially with companies plagued by worker scarcity, injuries and sky high error rates.
The Fullscope robot offsets up to five workers per 24-hour shift and dramatically reduces human pick error rates, enhancing productivity and time to market while driving down costs.
Its patented battery technology enables the robot to run 24×7, while its innovative vision system establishes a safety perimeter that protects workers as well as other objects within the workplace, without cages and other clumsy security systems.
The increasingly heavy use of robots and other automated devices within warehouses and manufacturing plants is driving the need for standardization, according to Hart.
He says: “Our robotic arm, riding on an autonomous mobile robot, features multiple 2D and 3D cameras that live stream an optimum path to storage spaces, ‘seeing’ totes and bins to pick and place payloads of different shapes and sizes up to 100 pounds.
“While the Fullscope robot arm can visualize virtually all totes and bins, the consistency of targets is optimum, as AI vision requires pre-training to a specific object.
“The uniformity of Orbis’ reusable containers makes the process faster and more accurate.
He adds: “A number of Fortune 50-level e-commerce, consumer products, manufacturing and transportation companies partnered with us after the 2022 show.
“We’ve spent the last two years significantly improving the vision, safety, battery life and other aspects of our robot.
“We’re now on Version 9 and Version 10 of the system. The guts of each version are the same, but we’ve customized certain elements – for example, the grippers – to suit specific customer needs.
“We have a contract for Version 10 with one of the world’s largest transportation companies, and at the end of Modex we’ll be shipping the show’s Version 9 robot to one of the world’s largest consumer products companies.
“We’re also working with companies in other industries, including manufacturing.”