Brightpick Unveils Warehouse Robot Capable of Accessing 20-Foot High Shelves
On Tuesday, Brightpick, a manufacturer of autonomous mobile robots, introduced an impressive new addition to its product lineup. The Giraffe system, aptly named, features a large, retractable platform that can extend up to 20 feet (6 meters) in height, allowing it to efficiently pick items from warehouse shelves. This innovative solution addresses the challenges faced in warehouses with ceilings that are often unreachable for both standard AMRs and their human counterparts.
The Giraffe achieves this impressive height through a telescoping arm comprising three overlapping segments, which extend a total of 8.5 feet when fully retracted. Instead of continually extending and retracting by 11.5 feet at a time, the system is engineered to work in conjunction with Brightpick’s existing Autopicker robot. This AMR, equipped with two supply bins, complements the Giraffe by extending up to 11 feet.
The design of the Giraffe is reminiscent of the telescoping warehouse robots developed by London-based Dexory. However, while Dexory’s “DexoryView” platform focuses solely on shelf scanning through sensors, the Giraffe is tasked with the more complex job of transferring items from the shelves.
In the realm of tall-shelf warehouse inventory, Dexory faces competition from drone-based scanning startups like Gather AI, Verity, and Corvus. However, the lifting and transporting of payloads is too resource-intensive for quadcopters, meaning they are unlikely to encroach on Giraffe’s operational territory anytime soon.
A more relevant comparison can be drawn with the automated storage and retrieval systems from companies such as AutoStore and Kardex. These tightly packed grid solutions are often costly to implement, challenging to maintain, and typically less adaptable to varying inventory sizes. In contrast, Brightpick’s order-picking solution utilizes AMRs that navigate traditional warehouse shelves to retrieve inventory.
Another innovative option is provided by BionicHive, which employs Squid systems that operate on shelf-mounted tracks for inventory retrieval. Amazon also recognized the potential of this Israeli robotics startup, investing in BionicHive in 2022 as part of its Industrial Innovation Fund.
As the warehouse and logistics sectors continue to automate at a rapid pace, there remains ample opportunity for diverse form factors and solutions to thrive.
Brightpick plans to deploy the Giraffe system for two significant customers in 2025. E-commerce retailer The Feed will utilize six Giraffes alongside 73 Autopickers at a facility in Colorado, while medical supply company McGuff Company will implement four Giraffes and a dozen Autopickers in its California warehouse.
Brightpick asserts that the combination of Giraffe and Autopicker enables three times the warehouse density of traditional manual operations, while also doubling the efficiency of its existing solutions.