The AutoPallet system makes use of magnets to drive on metal panels mounted overhead and to choose and place circumstances on pallets and conveyors under. | Credit score: AutoPallet
AutoPallet Robotics is targeted on fixing palletizing challenges with a novel warehouse robotic. The startup made the primary public demonstration of its palletizing/depalletizing system at Manifest 2026 immediately. Its founders acquired their begin at Y Combinator in 2024.
The AutoPallet robots are small autonomous cellular robots (AMRs) that drive the other way up, magnetically affixed to a metal plate positioned over the goal workspace. The robots decrease a vacuum gripper right down to a pallet or conveyor to accumulate a field, then elevate the field up and carry it to the goal drop location.
The freestanding modular superstructure bolts into the warehouse ground, permitting operators to drop high-density automation into current buildings with out redesigning their total materials movement.
“We began from the query, ‘What would a purpose-built, trendy robotic structure for case dealing with appear like when you didn’t assume a robotic arm on a pedestal?’” mentioned Eric Miller, co-founder of AutoPallet Robotics. “By placing small, environment friendly robots on the ceiling, we can provide operators dense, versatile sortation and palletizing in locations the place conventional automation options simply don’t match.”
The firm‘s structure is designed for versatile case sortation and palletizing in quite a lot of roles. AutoPallet robots can obtain blended streams of numerous circumstances, type them throughout many pallet positions, and straight construct dense pallets in the identical zone.
As a result of the entire complexity lives within the ceiling of the workcell, pallets and conveyors will be packed tightly underneath the panels, delivering a stage of floorspace density that’s inconceivable to realize with conventional loop sorters, tilt-trays, or arm-based cells.
AutoPallet builds self-contained robotic pods
The AutoPallet robots are fully self-contained, battery-powered models. The cellular base has an onboard battery for the drive propulsion, and the gripper has its personal battery to energy the vacuum pump.
The bottom and gripper talk wirelessly, simplifying the mechanical winch drive that lowers the gripper meeting to accumulate a field. Every robotic communicates with the opposite robots within the swarm via a wi-fi mesh community, enabling them to share directions and keep away from collisions.
The lithium-phosphate batteries will be shortly swapped, minimizing downtime, defined AutoPallet. The robots also can transfer to a charging station to recharge when not in operation.
Contained throughout the gripper are the downward-looking cameras and sensors for notion. These sensors allow the robotic to find the goal gadgets to accumulate and find the location positions. The bottom accommodates the drive motor and first compute for the person robotic.
The corporate is creating the simulation and orchestration software program to handle the operations.
“We’re marrying two worlds of AI, the AI used for robotic arms and the AI used for AMRs,” defined Miller. “However we’re combining them within the reverse method that folks usually do. We’re not placing the robotic arm on the AMR; we’re placing an AMR as a robotic, as a gantry, and really a lot can construct on the advances within the trade. In each of these areas.”
A brand new tackle an outdated idea
AutoPallet mentioned its innovbation allows a number of overhead robots to function throughout the identical workspace, not like overhead gantries, which permit solely a single gripper to function within the work surroundings.
There have been different makes an attempt up to now to create an overhead cellular gripper idea, most notably within the mid-1980’s to ‘90’s with RobotWorld, designed by Victor Sheinman and commercialized by Automatix (later acquired by Yaskawa); Megamation; and Cimflex Teknowledge. These prior approaches had been restricted as a result of the movable heads wanted a path plan, they needed to sometimes “untangle” with energy and air cables, they usually in the end didn’t ship the throughput of robotic arms.
The onboard battery energy and vacuum technology of the AutoPallet robots deal with the design flaws of three a long time in the past.
AutoPallet will present its system in Sales space 2371 at Manifest this week in Las Vegas.
