Hardware Podcasts

Reaching New Heights: The Giraffe Robot's impact on warehouse efficiency

The Robot Report Podcast · 18 Jul 2025 · 1h 31m

AI in practice: 2 real uses of AI described

What this episode covers

Charlie Kemp, CTO and co-founder of Hello Robot, and Jan Zizka, CEO and co-founder of Brightpick, discuss the evolution of warehouse robotics. Kemp details Hello Robot's Stretch 3, a mobile manipulator designed for accessibility and open-source community development, while Zizka explains Brightpick's new Giraffe robot, a two-stage telescopic system that doubles warehouse density without increasing footprint. The conversation covers technical challenges in stability and parallel movement, the shift to a Robotics-as-a-Service (RaaS) business model, and the integration of physical AI to match or exceed human picking speeds.

AI in practice

Where this conversation describes AI being used to build or deliver a product. Part of the AI in practice tracker.

Engineering & simulationfast SAM (fast segment anything model)

The team used the off-the-shelf fast SAM model to segment pieces of food for a feeding application, allowing the robot to identify and present virtual boundaries for the user to direct the robot.

“in feeding application that has been developed by Dr. Ranganetti and and others, it uses this off the shelf model, the fast SAM, fast segment, anything model. And it's perfect because it is able to segment the pieces of food and present these virtual…”

Charlie Kemp · Hear it at 34:39

Engineering & simulationAI-based OCRimplemented in one week

Bright Pick implemented AI-based optical character recognition to read damaged barcodes and QR codes on totes, serving as a fallback when standard reading failed.

“it was very quick, you know, in one week we were able to implement, you know, AI-based OCR, because there's a label below the barcode, you know, which is kind of a fallback for the barcode reading…”

Jan Zizka · Hear it at 1:12:47

Most relevant to

early-stage companies

Topics

Mentioned

Companies
Hello Robot, Brightpick, RealSense, Intel, Neuro, Lucid, Waymo, Tesla, Novanta, UBTech, Figure, Agility Robotics, Geek+ Robotics, Right Hand Robotics, Locust Robotics
Products
Stretch 3, Giraffe, Auto Picker 2.0

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