Kindred’s Intelligent Picking Robot Overcomes Supply Chain Challenges with AI Technology

SORT picking technology alleviates staffing shortages and consistently meets throughput demands

Kindred will showcase its latest robotics technology with artificial intelligence (AI) at ProMat 2019. The company's picking robot, SORT, has human-like grasping capabilities and separates multi-SKU batches into individual customer orders.


"Today's ecommerce and distribution businesses face the critical roadblocks of staffing shortages and meeting throughput demands. There are simply not enough skilled workers to fill the void," says Jim Liefer, CEO, Kindred. "Our SORT robots have achieved over eight million picks in production, helping our retail customers meet demand and create a dynamic workforce that marries automation with human skills."

SORT picking robots utilize AutoGraspTM, a robotics intelligence platform that becomes smarter, faster and more accurate over time. This platform combines vision, grasping and manipulation algorithms to deliver fast, accurate picking. SORT easily integrates with any warehouse management software (WMS) and can evaluate items in real-time, picking and matching them to individual customer orders. This increases productivity, expanding capacity and improving overall efficiency for supply chain operations.

Gone are the days of hefty up-front equipment investments and maintenance costs. Businesses can trial and implement robotic solutions without making a large capital purchase with Kindred's unique Robots as a Service (RaaS) model. The pay-per-pick model gives customers the product and technical expertise based on their unique needs and demand.

Kindred uses cutting-edge AI research and human-in-the-loop data methodology to continuously improve robot capabilities. Kindred's AI-powered solution evaluates millions of data points to calculate and execute an optimal pick strategy for each task in real-time. With the power of AI combined with a RaaS model, customers can quickly scale up and down based on capacity needs.

For more information about Kindred and SORT, visit: www.kindred.ai/products.

Editor's Note: Robotics and AI experts from Kindred will be at ProMat booth #N6351 for interviews by appointment. Contact Desirae MacGillivray Myers at desirae.macgillivray@portavocepr.com to schedule an interview time.

About Kindred

Kindred is a robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) company that develops robots to solve real-world problems. Kindred's cutting-edge technology is the foundation of a number of proprietary platforms including AutoGraspTM, developed to operate robots autonomously in dynamic environments. Its team of scientists, engineers, and business operators have set a new standard for reinforcement learning for robots. Kindred's flagship solution, SORT, is a piece-picking robot with human-like grasping capabilities that operates in retail environments to separate multi-SKU batches into customer orders. The company is co-located in San Francisco and Toronto. For more information, visit www.kindred.ai.

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