Kiva Systems Founders to Join Logistics Hall of Fame as Mobile Robot Pioneers

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In 2003, Mick Mountz, Dr. Peter Wurman, and Prof. Raffaello D’Andrea invented the mobile order fulfillment robot for intralogistics, founded Kiva Systems, and created an automation category that has flourished over the past two decades. The jury voted to recognize their innovations by inducting them into the Logistics Hall of Fame.

“Mountz, Wurman and D’Andrea can claim to have made the concept of person-to-person fulfillment a global standard for many e-commerce and omnichannel processes,” said Anita Wuermser, chair of the Logistics Hall of Fame judging panel. “For many companies, mobile robotic fulfillment systems are the technological foundation for same-day delivery as we know it today.”

“First, you have to find a real business problem,” Wurman notes. “Startups that just have technology to sell very rarely work. Mick saw a real business problem. He didn’t know exactly how to solve it, but he thought robotics might be the answer. Then Raffaello came on board, and our job was to find the concrete form of those answers and make the technologies work for Kiva Systems.”

The expert jury consisted of 70 members from business, science, politics and media from 13 countries. The stated purpose of the Logistics Hall of Fame in Ismaning, Germany, is to document industry milestones and honor individuals who have contributed to the development of business and society.

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Webvan’s collapse led to an increase in robotic order fulfillment

“The collapse of U.S. e-commerce provider Webvan in 2001 also sparked the birth of the idea for a mobile, robotic order fulfillment system,” notes the Logistics Hall of Fame.

Mountz attributed his former employer’s decline to inflexible intralogistics systems and high order fulfillment costs. He set out to develop a method of picking, packing, and shipping orders that could deliver any item to any logistics worker at any time.

“At the time, the company had about 301,000 square feet of warehouse space, as well as miles of conveyors, carousels, and hand-picked carts,” Mountz recalls. “The goal was to get customer items into bins. In some areas, people would put bins in carts and walk up and down the aisles.”

Kiva founders (from left) Peter Wurman, Mick Mountz and Raffaelo D’Andrea. Source: Logistics Hall of Fame.

To bring his idea to life, Mountz enlisted the help of AI and software expert Wurman and robotics and AI pioneer D’Andrea. They founded Distrobot in 2003, and in 2005, the company became Kiva Systems LLC. Mountz became CEO of the company, with Wurman and D’Andrea as co-chief technology officers.

Together they developed the Kiva Mobile Robotic Fulfillment System (U.S. Patent No. 8,649,899). The system used autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) to provide continuous movement of inventory on small shelves between storage areas and picking stations. In traditional fulfillment centers, humans walk up to 15 km (9.3 miles) per day to search shelves for products.

With Kiva’s order fulfillment system, inventory was consolidated in the center of the warehouse. Workers were located at picking stations around the perimeter.

Once an order was received, the mobile robots would retrieve the appropriate mini-shelf and deliver it to a worker who would place the products in a shipping carton. The setup was designed to scale quickly and cheaply, with a return on investment (ROI) typically in less than two years.

According to the Logistics Hall of Fame, in many commercial warehouses, long walking distances and forklift transportation, where there is always a risk of accidents, are now a thing of the past.

Kiva Systems has developed a comprehensive system

Kiva Systems found success with its cost-effective hardware and algorithms, both on robots and servers. Its AMRs navigated distribution centers safely by fusion of sensor data from sources such as a camera and inertial sensors to determine the robot’s position in the warehouse.

“The specific mobile robot we needed didn’t exist at the time,” Mountz said. “We also took a few principles from my time at Apple: Build the solution from start to finish. Then you can control whether everything works smoothly.”

“We developed the robot, the software that tells it where to go, the operator touchscreen and the plant manager interface,” he said. “We had to make sure it worked. Because we were bringing something completely new to customers’ warehouses and we were guaranteeing results.”

The robots performed missions orchestrated using wireless communications to ensure no collisions occurred. Cloud-based software ensured the system optimized the use of worker and robot time.

Kiva Systems, with 275 employees, was a fully vertically integrated company, producing all hardware and software, including two different robot models. One could handle payloads of up to 450 kg (992 lb) and the other up to 1,400 kg (3,086.4 lb).

By 2012, Kiva’s orange robots were in use at dozens of customers, including Walgreens, Staples and The Gap, and the company had made $100 million in deliveries. Its largest customer was Amazon, which acquired the company in March 2012 for $775 million.

In August 2015, the company changed its name from Kiva to Amazon Robotics LLC. By 2024, the company will approach 800,000 AMRs deployed in the e-commerce giant’s warehouses worldwide.

“Kiva/Amazon Robotics is estimated to save Amazon $10 billion annually, more than 10 times more than Amazon acquired Kiva,” D’Andrea said. “Every month, Kiva pays for itself. It’s a great investment.”

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The trio and its technology achieve further successes

While Amazon has since withdrawn the system developed by Mountz, Wurman, and D’Andrea, other logistics and robotics companies have developed similar robots and more over the past decade. Dozens of companies make AMRs, including ABB, Agilox, Locus Robotics, Mobile Industrial Robots (MiR), OMRON, and OTTO Motors.

ABI Research predicts that by 2030 the global installed base of AMRs will exceed 500,000.

“Mobile robots may not replace all conveyors, but they are a good alternative that provides a cost-effective, much more flexible solution,” Wurman noted. “Companies can start small, with a few robots, and then expand as their business grows.”

Mountz currently serves on the board of MIT Corp., The Engine Accelerator, and inventory drone vendor Verity. Wurman is an executive at Sony AI. D`Andrea is the founder, chairman, and CEO of Verity, and a professor at ETH Zurich.

“What really excites me about the future is the day when we can make machines as robust and versatile as biology,” D’Andrea said. “We have no idea how to do that today. Until then, robotics companies will have to focus on the low-hanging fruit, and there isn’t much of it. Examples include Kiva Systems with mobile robots, iRobot with Roomba, and—hopefully too early to declare victory—Verity with mobile intelligence.”

The trio, who are already in the National Inventors Hall of Fame, will be officially inducted into the Logistics Hall of Fame at a gala reception on December 5 at the Federal Ministry of Digital Affairs and Transport in Berlin. To date, 44 logistics experts, including the founders of Kiva Systems, have been inducted into the Logistics Hall of Fame.

The organization also awards the Logistics Leader of the Year Award to pioneers in the field of logistics, supported by donor STILL GmbH. In addition, the hall of fame recognizes innovative logistics projects of humanitarian organizations by awarding them the Lynn C. Fritz Medal for Excellence in Humanitarian Logistics, sponsored by the Fritz Institute.

Dr. Volker Wissing, German Federal Minister for Digital Affairs and Transport, is patron of this non-profit initiative, which has numerous corporate and association sponsors.