Robust AI Designs Carter to Help People Work Alongside Robots in Warehouses and Factories
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Robust AI, co-founded by Anthony Jules and MIT Professor Emeritus Rodney Brooks, developed Carter, a mobile robot designed to work alongside people in warehouses and factories. Resembling a utility cart, Carter has a force-sensitive handlebar, an AI-powered vision system, and holonomic wheels that let it move in any direction. Workers can guide it by pushing or pulling with one hand, using gestures, or operating its onboard touch screen. Robust AI says its robots are deployed in logistics warehouses and on factory floors, helping with picking, shelf stocking, and autonomous movement of items across facilities.
The company’s approach is aimed at workplaces where people, robots, and backend systems share tasks. Jules says that overall system performance depends on how those elements work together, and that workers need an appropriate level of agency and input. Robust AI chose logistics and manufacturing as early target industries after interviewing potential customers through several product pivots. Jules argues that many factories lack even basic automation such as conveyor belts and are unlikely to replace their operations with systems costing $50 million to $200 million.
Carter’s role in these environments is a specific point to monitor: the source reports deployments in warehouses and factories but does not disclose deployment numbers, customer names, or locations. Robust AI’s earlier plan to build a robotics software platform shifted during the Covid-19 pandemic to surface-disinfection robots, then changed again after the founders concluded that surface transmission was not the relevant problem. No further timeline was disclosed at the time of publication.
Original report
Helping robots fit into the human workplace
MITNews · Zach Winn | MIT NewsThis briefing is an independently written summary based on publicly available reporting and is provided for industry information and news discovery. The original report and source publication are credited and linked where applicable. RobotToday does not claim ownership of third-party source material.
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