Pick-It: eyes for robots
PMV is a true sparring partner that asks the right questions about the challenges in the business plan.
Peter Soetens, CEO of Pick-It
With advancing automation, the demand for industrial robots continues to rise. From 2013 to 2019, the number of global installations increased 19% annually. While the number of units sold was only 120,000 in 2010, by the end of 2018, the counter already stood at 384,000 units, accounting for a market value of USD 16.5 billion. Asia is by far the largest market, followed by Europe and the Americas. Yet Europe remains the region with the highest robot density: there are 114 robots per 10,000 employees in our continent.
Of the industrial robots, more than half are ‘handling’ robots that have the most applications. In addition, ‘collaborative’ robots – ‘cobots’ – are on the rise. These work side by side with humans in a collaborative (industrial) working environment. What still distinguishes both types from humans – in the negative sense – is their lack of vision. This makes them difficult to deploy for order picking or machine-tending processes in the logistics or manufacturing sector. Robots have difficulty in identifying and locating random products in a random place.
User-friendly
Pick-It, which developed from the robotics working group at KU Leuven, offers an equally ingenious and obvious solution for such difficult processes. PhD students Peter Soetens, Ruben Smits and Bert Willaert developed software for a 3D camera system that can be connected to industrial robots. A pair of eyes for a robot, so to speak. While traditional vision programming still encounters numerous obstacles, such as programming the robot itself and configuration, Pick-It bypasses those cliffs through simple software compatible with all robots. Peter Soetens, CEO of Pick-It, says: “We excel mainly through our user-friendliness. In less than one day, users can configure our camera software. This configuration is done in two ways. Either the camera takes a 3D photo of the specific object, based on which the robot knows which object to look for. Or the user enters a 3D model of the object, so the robot can then search for the object based on the model.”
Unique development
The market was waiting for Pick-It’s innovation, as evidenced by the enthusiastic response from users and distributors alike. Not only is its user-friendliness an asset, the system’s price is also more than competitive. A Pick-It camera costs barely a third of existing 3D systems from competitors. To bring the system to the market, Pick-It’s engineers could count on a capital injection and co-financing from PMV, in addition to input from a private investor. Peter Soetens is delighted with PMV’s entry: “PMV is a real sparring partner that asks the right questions about the challenges in the business plan. Besides the purely monetary input, the analysis by a PMV team with extensive experience in both finance and technology is very valuable.”
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