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Collaborative Robotics Inc. today unveiled its Proxie mobile manipulator publicly for the first time. The startup has been secretive about the design of the robot since Brad Porter founded the company in 2022.
Porter has hinted at the design of the robot by alluding to the importance of a mobile manipulator for applications within the warehouse, with a kinematic better suited for warehouse workflows than a humanoid.
Porter brings robotics experience, vision
Porter has been a frequent contributor to The Robot Report and a guest on The Robot Report Podcast. He most recently shared his thoughts about Amazon’s acquihire of the Covariant leadership.
At Amazon, Porter led the deployment of more than 500,000 robots as vice president of robotics and distinguished engineer. After Amazon, Porter saw an opportunity to accelerate more ubiquitous autonomy through better data and tooling, leading him to join Scale AI as chief technology officer.
Proxie already in trials
In April 2024, Collaborative Robotics closed a $100 million Series B round toward commercializing its autonomous mobile robot (AMR). The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company said Proxie can safely and affordably work alongside people in varied manufacturing, supply chain, and healthcare workflows.
In many cases, this is the same work humanoids are jockeying for. In June 2024, Collaborative Robots opened an office in Seattle and began adding to its AI team.
The base of Proxie includes four “swerve drive” motors that provide holonomic motion. | Credit: Collaborative Robotics
Porter told The Robot Report that Proxie is already in trials with several pilot customers, including a global logistics company. Featured clients include Moderna, Mayo Clinic, Owens & Minor, and Tampa General Hospital. He said Proxie has roughly the stature of a human.
We asked Porter about the design intentions of going with the swerve drive versus other AMR base designs. Proxie has a base with four drive wheels in a “swerve drive” configuration. The AMR attaches to a cart and then pulls the cart to its next destination, navigating safely through the facility.
“The swerve drive gives you pseudo holonomic motion, enabling you to slide sideways into a set of shelving units. The swerve drive also enables you to snap the casters before you start to move. With a differential drive base, the AMR doesn’t have the degrees of freedom, so it’s more clumsy. Finally, mecanum wheels have other problems that are difficult to manage in production.”
On top of the base is a vertical linear axis that carries a dual arm cart interfacing gripper for cart-moving implementations. A six-degree-of-freedom collaborative robot arm will be an optional configuration for Proxie in the future.
Porter said the company has a dual-arm manipulator in its lab, equipped with the ALOHA grippers, for manipulation tasks.
Proxie can be equipped with a rolling cart gripper that attaches to the cart on the normal handle, and then guides the cart throughout the facility. | Credit: Collaborative Robotics
Mobile manipulation gaining momentum?
Mobile Industrial Robots (MiR) also today unveiled a mobile manipulator, the MC600. The mobile manipulator combines a MiR600 AMR with the UR20 and UR30 collaborative robot arms from Universal Robots A/S. Both companies are owned by Teradyne. The MC600 can handle payloads up to 600 kg (1,322 lb.) and automate complex workflows in industrial environments.
“I believe that mobile manipulators are a better solution than humanoids. This comes from having looked at how to put humanoids into environments like Amazon, where we looked at a lot of the process paths, and at what type of work was being done and then we looked at the complexity of trying to put a humanoid robot in there. Including the cost, the complexity, the safety, the battery life, and the AI that was going to be required,” Porter said, “and we just became concerned that the robots weren’t going to be strong enough. We don’t talk enough about the fact that humanoids look cool, but they’re not very strong. They’re not going to be able to move a 1500-pound cart, like Proxie can.”
Kassow Robots is targeting mobile manipulation with its new Edge Edition cobot arms. The new cobots feature a direct DC connection from battery power, enabling them to operate while mounted to a mobile robot. They offer remote power on/off control, allowing for control from the mobile robot controllers or a PLC.
ASTM proposes mobile manipulator standards
ASTM International’s F45 committee on robotics is proposing a new standard practice (WK92144) to measure how well mobile manipulators handle disturbances in unstructured environments. This standard includes guidelines for documenting how these automated arms react to disruptions, using a sample testing apparatus. According to Omar Aboul-Enein from ASTM, factors like heavy machinery can negatively impact these robots, especially in critical sectors like aerospace and energy that deal with complex parts.
This standard will benefit manufacturers, integrators, and end-users by providing a way to measure reliability and improve mobile manipulator performance. If you’re interested in participating in developing ASTM standards, you can join at www.astm.org/JOIN.
Cobot’s Proxie release opens up the question: Are humanoids the correct way to address labor shortages in Industry? With smarter AMRs’s, robot arms and end-effectors, could we solve problems more efficiently? Cobot says yes. Humanoids will be more effective in some environments, but the idea that they are the solution to all seems to be in jeopardy.