Raffaello D'Andrea
Raffaello D'Andrea is a Canadian-Italian-Swiss engineer and ETH Zurich professor who co-founded Kiva Systems in 2003 and later founded Verity, which makes indoor drones for warehouse inventory checks.
What they did and why it matters
D'Andrea designed the control systems that let hundreds of Kiva robots move shelving pods to pickers without colliding, the technical core of goods-to-person robotics. Kiva's robots lifted shelves and brought them to stationary workers, cutting walking time, and Amazon bought the company in 2012. His later company Verity uses autonomous drones to scan warehouse racks and count inventory. Both ideas address everyday warehouse costs: travel time in picking and labor spent on cycle counts, which is why robotics vendors today still build on his work.
Related people
Events
Sources
- Raffaello D'Andrea (Wikipedia) en.wikipedia.org
- 2022 NIHF Inductee Raffaello D'Andrea (National Inventors Hall of Fame) invent.org