IEEE Spectrum: Today at ProMat, a company called Pickle Robots is announcing Dill, a robot that can unload boxes from the back of a trailer at places like ecommerce fulfillment warehouses at very high speeds. With a peak box unloading rate of 1800 boxes per hour and a payload of up to 25 kg, Dill can substantially outperform even an expert human, and it can keep going pretty much forever as long as you have it plugged into the wall.
Pickle Robots says that Dill’s approach to the box unloading task is unique in a couple of ways. First, it can handle messy trailers filled with a jumble of boxes of different shapes, colors, sizes, and weights. And second, from the get-go it’s intended to work under human supervision, relying on people to step in and handle edge cases. Pickle Robots engineers have not released any info regarding the robots’ ability to crush our tiny human fingers, or to deliver a crippling sac-punch.