Corvus Robotics’ innovative storage tracking system uses fully autonomous drones to take warehouse inventory control to new heights.
The Corvus One Autonomous Inventory Management System provides warehouse managers with a bird’s-eye view, enabling them to oversee up-to-the-minute reports on product locations and resolve discrepancies in real time. The deployments follow four years of challenging development.
Jackie Wu, co-founder and CEO of Corvus Robotics, developed his autonomous drone idea by observing warehousing operations in 10 countries. He found inventory scattered on massive pallets and sky-high metal shelves. Some of these facilities approached the size of five football fields, with storage bins stretching four stories high.
Wu noticed that they all have one thing in common: people with barcode scanners or paper and pencils climb around product stockpiles, updating printouts from previous inventory logs. It is a very slow process fraught with inaccuracies.
In 2017, Wu applied his graduate school training in robotics to address the pain points in warehouse management, making them more efficient and less costly to operate. He teamed up with co-founder Mohammed Kabir to develop the Boston-based company that currently has 20 employees. Research and development took several years for the company to reach its first real deployments in 2022.
Jackie Wu, Corvus Robotics Co-Founder and CEO
Corvus’ fully autonomous micro aerial vehicles need no human operators to fly them. The technology Corvus created enables the robotic drones to fly unattended within huge warehouses day or night, even in total darkness.
AI-based programming controls their ability to follow prescribed flight paths, adapt to navigational barriers, and respond to changes in the layout. They silently zip around corridors, vertically scale elevated storage shelves, record barcoded data, and deliver all surveillance results to the computer system.
Corvus uses computer vision, AI, and aerial robotics, which it designed from scratch to deploy a solution that tracks inventory. Wu claims it is 10 times faster and much cheaper than other warehousing management platforms.
“The platform is an AI model for autonomy that sits on site, in a computer, and on each of the drones,” Wu told TechNewsWorld. “The drones create a new digital model of the warehouse world, akin to a digital twin, every time they fly. They’re also trained to recognize the differences in inventory and barcode labels for every single site on the next flight.”
Laying the Groundwork for Indoor Drone Tech
Using drones commercially indoors is a relatively recent development. For many years, the concept of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for business applications struggled to gain traction. Only recently has the technology for autonomous indoor navigation matured enough to support practical commercial use.
Early UAV deployments primarily focused on outdoor applications, including filmmaking, agriculture, and infrastructure inspection. Around 2010, innovative companies started combining logistics expertise with industrial drone technology to overcome the challenges of autonomous indoor flight. Stumbling points included unreliable GPS signals indoors, poor computer vision due to inadequate interior lighting, and the nascent state of AI sensor technology.
Success came as developers replaced GPS navigation with a combination of Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) technology, visual sensors, and complex algorithms to map and navigate warehouses. Industry reports show a steep upward trajectory for the adoption of inventory drones.
One report valued the drone-based warehouse inventory market at over $1.2 billion in 2024, with projections to reach nearly $10 billion by 2033. This represents a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 20%.
“I like the Corvus Robotics drones because they are out of sight and out of mind. They’re doing things that there’s really not a lot of value to an individual, but to the business it’s priceless,” said Bill Monk, vice president of distribution for GNC.
Using the Corvus One System means GNC does not have to pull material handling equipment and laborers from other tasks to perform audits. Drones count pallets and cases, batch scan multiple SKUs in the same location, and provide a volumetric analysis of the slot’s storage capacity, he explained.
Aerial Robotics 101 Explained
According to Wu, “robotics” and “autonomous drones” are not terms for the same technology. Robotics is considered a discipline. Drones or micro vehicles are a sub-discipline.
Drones operate in 3D space, whereas robots move on the ground. Flying an autonomous drone in 3D requires more complexity, but many of the sensors and computer vision functionality are broadly interchangeable, he clarified.
Despite differences in the size and scope of warehouse deployments, Corvus uses the same system platform for every site. Wu noted that installation processes are not as complex as those for other inside surveillance and computerized inventory solutions.
“It depends on the size of the facility, but installation takes only one or two weeks. This is not like a nine-month setup where you have to install all this infrastructure, fix it to the ceiling, and put up racking and other support items. It’s pretty quick,” Wu explained. “In smaller business locations, we send one or two deployment engineers who set it up in a day.”
The computer software, which can reside in on-site or remote offices, processes data from drone flights to provide visual data and detailed textual reports. Corvus provides software and drone maintenance as needed, offering warehouse personnel a hands-off solution.
Cost-Efficient Inventory Solution
Wu noted that anyone in the warehouse — authorized workers, supervisors, and the floor manager — can access the warehouse management system’s (WMS) dashboard to search for an item or view the warehouse inventory in its entirety. Warehouse operators can compare data from previous drone flights to track discrepancies, confirm updated inventory reports, and track misplaced product storage.
“Instead of walking the floor and looking for every location, they can directly click into the software and look at the pictures,” said Wu.
Made-to-order programming puts all the decisions in the warehouse company’s hands, he added. Different customers have different shifts and different comfort levels. So customers can have us program inventory flyovers within a single or multiple time frames.
“Being able to run inventory checks 24/7 without operator assistance has been a game changer,” said Austin Feagins, senior director of transformation and solution design at Staci Americas. His company provides third-party logistics and warehousing services for businesses.
“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,” he explained.
Feagins wants the 24/7 inventory surveillance option installed in his company’s five U.S. buildings this year.
Continuous Problem Solving
Corvus’ R&D stages evolved into a continuous cycle of refining the technology to make it work. Over the past few years, the company has overcome numerous technical challenges, learning that no single solution exists to address all of them.
“There’s not been one magic unlock that just solved everything. It’s been a lot of lead bullets overcoming issues again and again, more banal issues, more surprising issues, and just kind of trusting in the strength of our engineering team to resolve them,” Wu said.
His company relied on open-source software whenever possible. However, much of the platform evolved around in-house coding, particularly in how they integrate software and hardware to achieve their unique autonomy in drone flying.
According to Wu, Corvus’ approach has developed a unique robot-as-a-service subscription-based model that is unmatched by competitors’ solutions. The cost factor is a key part of that success.
Prices vary depending on the facility’s size and the number of flights. He described other solutions as partially autonomous or lower-tech, where users push a drone around or put up expensive setups beyond what Corvus charges.
“The interesting thing is that the customer makes ROI in month one because it is cheaper than what they are currently paying to do this job,” he concluded.
Source: technewsworld.com
