Soft Robotics Inc., which makes pliable grippers to pick up objects from pens to pizza dough, is getting $20 million in funding to expand into the logistics and e-commerce market.
The Cambridge, Mass.-based company‘s technology is aimed at taking robots in industrial settings beyond repetitive, programmed movements by giving them the ability to pick up and move various goods of varying sizes and weights. The rapid growth of online sales, combined with a tight labor market, has companies looking for such tools in warehouses, where armies of human workers pick, pack and ship e-commerce orders.
Robots have long been used to perform repetitive tasks in factories and many warehouses. But teaching machines to pick up the wide range of products at fulfillment centers can be complicated and costly. Some companies are using artificial intelligence to speed up the learning curve for robots tasked with grasping everything from baby wipes and miniature shampoo bottles to sunglasses and plastic-bagged apparel.
Soft Robotics’s technology combines automation and vision-guided software with a gripper made of a soft polymer that molds itself around an object like an octopus tentacle. The spongy fingers can pick up an item without having to determine its weight or center of gravity, and without damaging fragile objects like tomatoes.
“It’s a pliable grasp,” Soft Robotics Chief Executive Carl Vause said. “All the force distribution is done by the materials.” The grips allow robots to adapt better than those that use suction cups or rigid metal grippers to pick up objects, he said.
Founded in 2013, the company has 32 employees and expects to add around 20 more by the end of the year. It has more than 100 customers, Mr. Vause said, including a large retail pizza company and Just Born Quality Confections, maker of Peeps marshmallow treats.
Mr. Vause declined to say how much annual revenue Soft Robotics generates, but said it was less than $10 million. Revenue grew last year more than 80% from the year before, according to the company.
The $20 million funding round, led by Hyperplane Venture Capital, will help Soft Robotics push into the retail and logistics market and expand in the food and beverage sector. The round, the company’s second, includes new investors Scale Venture Partners and the venture capital arm of Honeywell International Inc., as well as existing investors including ABB Technology Ventures, a unit of Swiss engineering and automation firm ABB Ltd.
Soft Robotics is rolling out a new retail and logistics application called SuperPick that uses a mix of artificial intelligence and human guidance to teach its robots to pick up a range of differently-sized objects. If the robot’s grasp fails, it can ask a remote operator for help, speeding up the learning process.
Other companies have used that approach, including Kindred, a manufacturer of robotic sorters that has offices in San Francisco and Toronto.
The technology is “a very elegant fusion of artificial intelligence and materials science,” said Vivjan Myrto, a partner and founder at Hyperplane. “We think that gives it an advantage over pure machine learning.”
Write to Jennifer Smith at jennifer.smith@wsj.com