Recently, Boston Dynamics said that since the stretch robot was first unveiled in March 2021, it has successfully achieved mass production. At MODEX 2022 at the Georgia World Convention Center in Atlanta, Boston Dynamics showcased a production version of its Strectch robot.
▍Analysis of development history
As manufacturing, supply chain, and transportation businesses continue to accelerate, Boston Dynamics has begun to think about how to commercialize after several acquisitions.
The Stretch mobile robot is the result of Boston Dynamics' mass production practice.
Stretch's predecessor was Handle. This is a mobile robot prototype that Boston Dynamics has released at ProMat 2019. It is also the first time that Boston Dynamics has truly ventured into the field of warehousing logistics robotics since it acquired Kinema Systems in 2019.
The Handle design combines the same dynamics, balance, and movement manipulation characteristics of a quadruped or humanoid robot, making the system relatively simplified through the use of legs and wheels, trying to allow the robot to pass through rough terrain, climb stairs, jump, open doors, or handle objects in complex ways. Handle, for example, can pick up and move boxes that weigh more than 30 pounds.
According to Boston Dynamics, Handle's versatile design can handle pallet building, depalletizing and unloading tasks in warehouses, as well as automating difficult tasks in a human-sized environment without the need to install complex additional equipment.
Although the idea is good, the arm is obviously inferior to the tool in terms of actual grip effect and efficiency.
On the basis of the Handle, Boston Dynamics has since launched the second generation of the Handle.
In appearance, Handle Version 2 and Handle are not much different. The most obvious difference is that Handle's arms have been upgraded to suction cup grippers and are larger.
Boston Dynamics wanted to combine handling and flexibility to provide logistics with a material handling solution with a highly flexible footprint.
Technically, the biggest difference between Handle II and Handle is the role of the legs.
Handle II's legs can simulate an active suspension system, which changes leg length and support.
By changing the position of the base and the length of the legs, the height of the body's center of gravity, the left and right positions and the posture can be adjusted to improve the wheel's ability to pass under complex road conditions during the handling process, the stability of the body and the safety of high-speed movement when turning.
In addition, because the twisting of the body and arms can help improve the stability of forward movements, the entire series of Handle will have some twisting of the ass in the process of moving the box, which is more obvious in the second generation of Handle.
However, whether it is Handle or Handle II, it is still biased towards experimental nature.
In contrast, today's Sketch has matured a lot, flexible mobile, convenient operation, efficient work, and most importantly, the cost has also met the expectations of some enterprises.
This makes the Handle, which is difficult to directly use commercially, more likely after the upgrade.
▍A big step toward mass production
Stretch is a practice that Boston Dynamics decided to put aside the pride of the Hand series of robots and completely enter the factory at the request of the new owner Hyundai on March 29, 2021.
Judging from the appearance of the originally released Sketch product, it is not so much that the Sketch inherits the genes of the Handle series, but that it is a new composite robot.
At that time, the Self-Weight of The Street was about 1200 kg, and the lower half of the Handle series was removed from the wheel structure and replaced by the all-round moving base of the four independent control wheels that were more used and relatively more mature and stable on AGV and AMR.
The upper half features a dedicated robotic arm with 7 degrees of freedom and an adaptive gripper with perception. This large-arm extension robot can have a long-distance, large-scale working space, allowing the Strtch to reach objects 3.15 meters high, and the arm is extended laterally to about 2 meters in length.
In relative terms, this significantly reduces the cost of manufacturing The Street, allowing it to be sold at competitive prices.
In terms of inheritance, in addition to Boston Dynamics' decades of brand goodwill. Stretch also inherits the technology and experience of Handle, Atlas, Spot and other robots. For example, Strectch grabbing a box is not just about extending its arms and moving them, it also needs to coordinate and calculate its reasonable position and trajectory.
How to continuously promote the versatility of its robots without sacrificing its robustness and safety is the main direction in which Sketch, who works in the factory, continues to improve.
A video initially posted by Boston Dynamics on its YouTube channel showed a stretch with a maximum payload of 23 kilograms and a maximum load of 33 pounds and 15 kilograms, and that the robot could reach speeds of up to 800 boxes per hour if there were no moving obstacles around.
On this basis, stretch is also constantly upgrading in a year.
Today's mass-produced version of the Sketch robot has also undergone many changes, and overall, it is not much different from most of the composite robots in China.
The first is the continuous optimization of the appearance, from a punk style black technology products, after entering the factory, gradually smoothed out the edges and corners, the overall more rounded and harmonious, taking the chassis + mechanical arm structure, at the same time should be the hydraulic structure of the mechanical arm replaced by the electrically driven traditional industrial robot arm.
This means that the previous method of using the mechanical structure of the upper conveyor belt of the base to balance the inertial forces generated by the upper structure has proved to be less stable than the traditional base, lifting structure and robotic arm. At the same time, mature and low-cost chassis and robotic arm products are undoubtedly more able to adapt to the needs of the logistics industry.
At the end of the robotic arm is an array of suction cups with embedded sensors that are capable of handling a variety of complex packages when operating at high speeds.
The custom vacuum gripper is currently capable of handling up to 50 pounds at a time, i.e. being able to lift boxes or complexly shaped packages weighing up to about 23 kilograms.
Next to the robotic arm is also a "perception mast" with a camera and laser sensor to compensate for vision and guide the robotic arm movements. Using this vision system, Stretch can process dynamic information about packages in challenging environments, inspecting boxes for single or mixed SKUs in less than a second.
In the newly announced Sketch mass production product introduction, the robot is able to classify boxes without knowing their shape, from standard brown to highly graphical boxes, and does not require pre-programmed SKU numbers.
At the same time, Streach can also detect the surrounding environment of packages and containers, and autonomously recover any packages that move or fall during the unloading process.
These actions are made in real time to determine decisions and adjustments, without prior programming. Boston Dynamics says that with just a few hours of training, anyone can operate the robot.
In terms of battery life, it has also increased from 8 hours when it was announced in 2021 to 16 hours. The increase in sustainable time will greatly improve the efficiency of handling.
In terms of technology, the goal of future Streets is to be able to embed any existing non-standardized workplace, reduce single and fixed work patterns, and ultimately help provide automation solutions for non-structural environments without an automation foundation.
▍ Conclusion and future
Following the first four-legged robot, spott, Stretch is Boston Dynamics' second commercial offering.
But Spot's sales account for only a fraction of the company's costs, and when Hyundai acquired it, Boston Dynamics spent at least $150 million a year on costs. Today, Stretch has even greater potential to make Boston Dynamics a profitable company.
Currently, as demand in the U.S. consumer goods market rises, labor shortages and supply chain barriers have created challenges to continue to maintain the normal flow of goods. About 80 percent of the world's warehouses don't yet have any automated equipment, which provides a considerable potential market for Boston Dynamics' Strectch robots.
Robert Playter, CEO of Boston Dynamics, said: "Not only does product costs be greatly reduced, Stretch makes logistics operations more efficient and predictable, and improves supply chain security by taking on the physically demanding work in warehouses such as warehousing, storage, packaging, sorting, etc., helping retailers and logistics companies cope with the continued surge in demand for goods." ”
Boston Dynamics officially announced that The First Customer of The Street was DHL Supply Chain. DHL pre-ordered a $15 million Stretch robot in January 2022 to further automate its Warehouse in North America. Boston Dynamics plans to deliver the robots over the next three years.
In addition, Boston Dynamics has many early customers such as DHL Supply Chain, H&M, GAP and Performance Team – A Maersk Company, among which Boston Dynamics has also signed a multi-year contract with Performance Team – A Maersk Company, which hopes stretch can help it strengthen its warehouse and distribution capabilities.
Robert Playter revealed that the previously booked equipment will be offline and will be delivered in 2022, and this year can support the products booked for the next two years, and the delivery time is about 2023-2024. Many of Stretch's early customers have promised to deploy robots at scale in the future, which will help The Quick Tork become more widely available.
Although driven by the high-reputation IP of Boston Dynamics, there is bound to be no shortage of users in the world, but for Boston Dynamics, production capacity may still be a huge challenge.