Skip to Content

This Robot Will Haul Up to 1,500 Kilos Around a Warehouse for Nine Hours without Stopping

Next up on the list of jobs being automated: forklift driver.

Need to move a heavy load around a warehouse? Forget the forklift: a robot will do your bidding.

Say hello to Freight 500, pictured, and its beefier sibling, Freight 1500. These are the latest machines to emerge from the labs of Fetch Robotics. Led by chief executive Melonee Wise, who was one of our 35 Innovators Under 35 in 2015, Fetch has been developing affordable warehouse robots for a few years now. Both robots are much larger versions of a small, rolling device called Freight, which was designed to follow warehouse workers as they picked products from shelves.

The robots are designed to replace trolleys and forklifts in warehouses. As their names suggest, they carry 500 or 1,500 kilograms, respectively, with the larger one designed to carry the kinds of loads you might usually see arriving at a warehouse on top of a pallet. Once loaded, they find their way around and avoid hazards using a combination of lidar and stereo cameras, running for up to nine hours on a charge and rejuicing to 90 percent capacity in an hour.

The robots join similar devices on the market made by the likes of Clearpath Robotics. And for now, in the warehouses of e-tailers like Amazon or online grocery retailer Ocado, they will continue to coexist with humans. That’s because while it’s easy enough for a robot to lift a large box, they currently lack the fine motor skills and versatility required to reliably pick up, say, a pack of batteries followed by a bottle of detergent.

But you can expect that to change. Fetch itself has already designed robotic pickers, a German firm called Magazino has a machine that can gather items from multiple different shelves, and Ocado has built robot grippers that can handle your vegetables. It’s just a matter of time before they start replacing humans inside warehouses.

(Read more: “35 Innovators Under 35: Affordable Robots for the Warehouse and Beyond,” “Inside Amazon,” “A Warehouse Worker’s Best Friend—or Replacement?”)

Keep Reading

Most Popular

Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why.

And that's a problem. Figuring it out is one of the biggest scientific puzzles of our time and a crucial step towards controlling more powerful future models.

The problem with plug-in hybrids? Their drivers.

Plug-in hybrids are often sold as a transition to EVs, but new data from Europe shows we’re still underestimating the emissions they produce.

Google DeepMind’s new generative model makes Super Mario–like games from scratch

Genie learns how to control games by watching hours and hours of video. It could help train next-gen robots too.

How scientists traced a mysterious covid case back to six toilets

When wastewater surveillance turns into a hunt for a single infected individual, the ethics get tricky.

Stay connected

Illustration by Rose Wong

Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review

Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.

Thank you for submitting your email!

Explore more newsletters

It looks like something went wrong.

We’re having trouble saving your preferences. Try refreshing this page and updating them one more time. If you continue to get this message, reach out to us at customer-service@technologyreview.com with a list of newsletters you’d like to receive.