Frequently asked questions

With our proprietary software, anyone can easily tell a robot arm what to do using simple gestures and voice. Imagine you’re holding a wand and standing in front of a robot arm, then you gesture to what you want the robot to pick up and where you want the robot to place this object. Then, the robot starts doing this, no complex coding or programming required. This will take less than 10 minutes to get the robot to start or switch tasks, making it super easy for any worker to use.

“Under the hood”: full stack autonomy like a self-driving car except for manipulating objects. It’s a software layer that sits on top of existing robot hardware and software, but interacts directly with an end-user like a line worker instead of a robotics expert. 

In today’s world of same day and overnight delivery, speed to market is essential in the packaging industry. In areas where manual kitting or packing is being done today, like multipacks and/or variety packs, our solution addresses the challenges surrounding increased throughput while delivering return for you and your customers. With our solution, you can easily tell a robot arm to do different packaging tasks in minutes, allowing you the flexibility to keep up with the fast-changing customer orders.

Top 3 Value points:

1. Fast changeovers for quick turnarounds with new customer orders
2. Offset labor challenges and reduces risk/liabilities and costs of labor
3. Increase order volumes by increasing throughput rates

Our solution can easily keep up with packaging changes or short-run orders, therefore reducing time to market. Using our software, you can repurpose any robot arm for many tasks, eliminating waste of valuable hardware and maximizing your return on the system. 

No, all of the hardware we use is off the shelf. We have close relationships with the best robot and gripper manufacturers and have a team of expert engineers which will source the robot that will best fit your task.

The solution includes our proprietary software and off the shelf hardware including a robot, end effector, 3D camera, projector, and safety parts. We can customize the solution to meet your needs with any off the shelf hardware available today, including many options for end effectors to pick up many different types of objects.

Our team has dedicated customer support contacts for any technical and/or business issues. We also have a 24/7 online support portal.

(aka Task Changeovers) Under 10 minutes. You can easily teach any of your workers to do this, no need for any technical expertise. 

Yes, we can install different types of workflows, so that you can use the robot for multiple workflows, such as kitting, packing, and palletization. Think of the Southie solution as having different types of apps that allows the robot to handle different workflows as needed.

After the Southie team has spec’d and sourced components, then we’ll create your user workflow. Initial installation can be done in as little as half a day and up to 3 days. If you need to move the robot to a new location within your warehouse to do a new task, this can be completed in around 30 minutes. 

The speed will depend on if you want humans to work in very close capacities near the robot. In order to maintain a safe area when working closely with humans, the robot can move objects up to 20ppm. If you need a faster throughput rate, we can source a high-speed robot, but will need to include additional safety features to maintain a safe working space. 

At a minimum our solution allows the robot to pick up objects down to 5cm in size. At a maximum, the solution can pick up objects as large as the hardware available in the market will allow. This will depend on the robot payload and gripper size available.

Yes, there is a camera that can detect where parts and containers are (3D cameras).

Our software uses artificial intelligence (AI) and augmented reality (AR) to understand what the object is and how to pick it up. This allows it to distinguish between different objects and handle many different SKUs at once.

We are at least 50% less than other automation solutions. With automation, the solution does have to be slightly customized to fit the needs of your specific production process. We will work with your ROI goals to hit within your payback period (typically 18 months). Our pricing model includes an upfront cost and then a monthly subscription cost for the software.

Our biggest competitor today is manual labor. While there are many “no-code” solutions out there, all of them still requiring some type of programming. None of them that we know of can hit changeover times of 10 minutes or less for new orders AND allow your workers to do this without many hours of training.

We like to kick off the process with learning more about your automation needs. Contact meredith@southie.ai to set a quick 30 minute meeting with our team. During the meeting, we’ll be looking to learn more about where you want to use automation, what your current process looks like, and how Southie can best help you.