Stow: Robotic Packing of Items into Fabric Pods

Abstract

This paper presents a compliant manipulation system capable of placing items onto densely packed shelves. The wide diversity of items and strict business requirements for high producing rates and low defect generation have prohibited warehouse robotics from performing this task. Our innovations in hardware, perception, decision-making, motion planning, and control have enabled this system to perform over 500,000 stows in a large e-commerce fulfillment center. The system achieves human levels of packing density and speed while prioritizing work on overhead shelves to enhance the safety of humans working alongside the robots.

View on arXiv

@article{hudson2025_2505.04572,
  title={ Stow: Robotic Packing of Items into Fabric Pods },
  author={ Nicolas Hudson and Josh Hooks and Rahul Warrier and Curt Salisbury and Ross Hartley and Kislay Kumar and Bhavana Chandrashekhar and Paul Birkmeyer and Bosch Tang and Matt Frost and Shantanu Thakar and Tony Piaskowy and Petter Nilsson and Josh Petersen and Neel Doshi and Alan Slatter and Ankit Bhatia and Cassie Meeker and Yuechuan Xue and Dylan Cox and Alex Kyriazis and Bai Lou and Nadeem Hasan and Asif Rana and Nikhil Chacko and Ruinian Xu and Siamak Faal and Esi Seraj and Mudit Agrawal and Kevin Jamieson and Alessio Bisagni and Valerie Samzun and Christine Fuller and Alex Keklak and Alex Frenkel and Lillian Ratliff and Aaron Parness },
  journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2505.04572},
  year={ 2025 }
}

Comments on this paper