Corvus Robotics, a provider of autonomous inventory management systems, announced an updated version of its Corvus One system. This allows the company to fly its drone-powered system in a lights-out distribution center without any added infrastructure like reflectors, stickers, or beacons. This newest generation product is supported by an $18 million Series A round and seed funding led by S2G Ventures and Spero Ventures.
Watch the Corvus One drones fly in a lights-out warehouse.
Through obstacle detection at its core, the lightweight Corvus One drone safely flies at walking speed without disrupting workflow or blocking aisles. It can also preventatively ascend to avoid collisions with people, forklifts, or robots.
With computer vision and generative AI to understand its environment, the fully autonomous Corvus One drone system operates in both very narrow aisles (minimum width of 50 inches) and in vast aisles. With obstacle detection at its core, the lightweight drone safely flies at walking speed without disrupting workflow or blocking aisles. It can also preventatively ascend to avoid collisions with people, forklifts, or robots, if necessary. Its advanced barcode scanning can read any barcode symbology in any orientation placed anywhere on the front of cartons or pallets.
Corvus One can be depended on to boost efficiency and cut overall inventory costs, specifically:
1.) 10x Labor Productivity – By shifting associates to higher-value tasks like picking and replenishment, Corvus One improves operational efficiency while realizing hundreds of thousands of dollars in labor savings.
2.) Inventory accuracy and space optimization – The system helps maximize space utilization, avoid stockouts, and improve KPIs with more intelligent replenishment and accurate physical inventory (PI) counts. It ensures 99.9% inventory accuracy, can free up to 10% of total pallet racking space, and reduces shrinkage and material handling equipment costs.
3.) Flexible WMS integration – Corvus One works with or without a warehouse management system (WMS). Lite integration is available via CSV or XLS exports.
4.) Easy Implementation – Deploying Corvus One takes less than a week with no Wi-Fi installation.
KEY QUOTES:
“Corvus Robotics fits our mission to invest in companies that truly transform the way business is conducted. Other than a landing pad, its drone-powered system requires no infrastructure, is quick and easy to deploy, and cost-effective to manage. It literally merges with the existing warehouse environment.”
-Marc Tarpenning, co-founder of Tesla and partner at Spero Ventures
“At S2G, we seek out disruptive innovations that address evolving industry needs, and we believe Corvus exemplifies this perfectly. Its technology offers a tangible path to operational excellence by delivering accuracy and productivity gains, all while being easy to implement. We are proud to support a company that’s revolutionizing a core operational aspect for industries across the board.”
-Arthur Chow, principal at S2G
“Being able to run inventory checks 24/7 without operator assistance has been a game changer. The lights-out capability in the Corvus One system allows our inventory teams to correct discrepancies off-shift and pre-shift before production starts each day; limiting fulfillment delays and production impacts.”
-Austin Feagins, senior director of solutions, Staci Americas
“The Corvus One system is a vital component of end-to-end inventory visibility and optimization. We’re growing extremely quickly, and our recent funding round will be used to help Corvus meet rapidly growing customer adoption while continuing to build products with capabilities nowhere else in the world ever has had.”
-Jackie Wu, co-founder and CEO, Corvus Robotics
