Boston Dynamics’ latest version of Handle, robot designed for logistics

2 min read

Boston Dynamics, an American engineering and robotics design company has come up with the latest version of the Handle robot that will be useful in factories. The company previously launched the original version of this bot in 2017. And in the same year, Boston Dynamics was sold to SoftBank, which previously was under Google’s parent company Alphabet.

The latest version of Handle which is a mobile manipulation robot has been designed for logistics.

Last week, Boston Dynamics released a video on YouTube where the Handle robot is shown loading different types of boxes.

The robot autonomously performs SKU pallet building and depalletizing after initialization and localizing against the pallets. Handle has a vision system that tracks the marked pallets for navigation and finds individual boxes for grasping and placing.

When Handle places a box onto a pallet, it uses force control to place the box against its neighbors. The robot is designed to handle boxes up to 15 Kg (33 lb). And works with pallets that are 1.2 m deep and 1.7 m tall (48 inches deep and 68 inches tall).

Previously, Boston Dynamics has released interesting videos showing dog-like robots unloading dishwashers and climbing stairs, galloping Bovidae-like creatures, etc.

A description on the Boston Dynamics website about Handle reads, “Handle is a robot that combines the rough-terrain capability of legs with the efficiency of wheels. It uses many of the same principles for dynamics, balance, and mobile manipulation found in the quadruped and biped robots we build, but with only 10 actuated joints, it is significantly less complex.”

The Handle robot video is trending on Youtube with over 1,767,161 views. People seem to be excited about Handle but few are being skeptical about the target audience for Handle.

While others think it will help companies e-commerce giants like Amazon and Flipkart for their smooth warehouse functioning.

Know more about Handle on the Boston Dynamics’ website.