Aptiv, an industrial technology company, has announced that Robust.AI, a developer of AI-driven warehouse automation, has selected Aptiv’s intelligent perception solutions, including AI and Machine Learning based sensor fusion powered by the Aptiv Pulse sensor for its Gen 3 Carter collaborative mobile robot.
This selection builds on the companies’ existing collaboration to combine Aptiv’s proven solutions with Robust.AI’s robotics expertise and human-centered design to accelerate scalable, AI-powered robotic workflows, while also establishing the foundation for Performance Level d – or PL(d) – certification across relevant industrial safety use cases.
Jay Bellissimo, senior VP and president, intelligent systems, software and services, Aptiv, says: “Scale adoption of robotics requires safety critical perception that spans the dynamic conditions experienced in the real world.”
For the Gen 3 Carter, Aptiv fuses radar and vision using AI/ML on raw sensor detections delivered by the Pulse sensor. Early fusion of sensor inputs enables Aptiv to efficiently support depth map creation and occupancy grid population for navigation and functional safety.
Further, by combining a surround-view camera with ultra-short-range radar, Pulse enables reliable 360-degree sensing while reducing blind spots, cost and system complexity.
Paired with Robust.AI’s industry-leading vSLAM and state-of-the-art AI perception technologies, this solution delivers reliable performance for the complex environmental applications in which the Carter robot is designed to operate.
Bellissimo says: “By bringing Pulse to the Gen 3 Carter robot, we’re helping enable a more comprehensive and scalable approach to warehouse automation, while supporting a path toward the functional safety requirements increasingly demanded by these applications and the broader market of physical AI.”
For robotics and industrial automation applications, reliability across operating environments such as warehouses, manufacturing floors and cold storage is critical.
These environments are dynamic and frequently contain obstructions, dust, glare, moisture changes and reflective surfaces that can degrade conventional perception systems.
By combining the strengths of radar and vision, Aptiv enables better decision making and reliability when operating around people, equipment and other obstacles.
“Carter is built to work with people in real warehouse and manufacturing environments, so perception quality, system reliability and ease of deployment matter enormously,” says Anthony Jules, co-founder and CEO at Robust.AI.
“Aptiv’s Pulse sensor brings a differentiated camera-and-radar approach that further enables Carter to drive market leading performance and productivity in complex environments.”
As part of this next phase of collaboration, Aptiv is advancing towards PL(d) certification for Pulse across relevant industrial safety use cases. PL(d), part of the ISO 13849-1 standard, is a high-reliability safety classification used for hazardous robotics applications.
Functional-safety certification is paramount as robots operate with higher degrees of automation near people and equipment. This means devices must not only deliver safe operation in practice, but also support recognized safety frameworks.
Robust.AI’s Carter is a collaborative mobile robot designed to augment existing warehouse operations and workforces. Carter’s software-defined functionality allows facilities to operate via order fulfillment picking, point-to-point transport, and mobile sorting without additional hardware investment.
Its drop-in automation capabilities and performance-based RaaS model allows customers to deploy quickly and scale flexibly in response to shifting demand.
