Boston Dynamics Adapts Their ‘Nightmare Inducing’ Handle Robot for Warehouse Shipping Logistics

In 2017, Boston Dynamics introduced The Handle, a rolling robot with wheeled legs, that has a distinct appearance Boston Dynamics CEO Marc Raibert called “nightmare-inducing”.

The company has since adapted The Handle with grasping, sensing and stacking capabilities to efficiently address warehouse shipping logistics. Not only can these robots easily pick up boxes (up to 33 pounds) and stack them onto palettes, but their onboard computers keep track of where each box is located for later retrieval.

Handle is a mobile manipulation robot designed for logistics. Handle autonomously performs mixed SKU pallet building and depalletizing after initialization and localizing against the pallets. …When Handle places boxes onto a pallet, it uses force control to nestle each box up against its neighbors. The boxes used in the video weigh about 5 Kg (11 lbs), but the robot is designed to handle boxes up to (15 Kg) (33 lb). This version of Handle works with pallets that are 1.2 m deep and 1.7 m tall (48 inches deep and 68 inches tall).

Lori Dorn
Lori Dorn

Lori is a Laughing Squid Contributing Editor based in New York City who has been writing blog posts for over a decade. She also enjoys making jewelry, playing guitar, taking photos and mixing craft cocktails.

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