I visited Fetch Robotics as part of a field trip for a Stanford course I took. Fetch Robotics sold to Zebra Technologies for $290 million in 2021. They have about 130 employees.  It was so interesting to see another robotics company in full-swing - making, testing and shipping robots. All the while improving their technology and creating more robots to sell.

Fetch robots are used to assist warehouse packers to increase productivity and reduce errors. The robots roam around the floor to where the merchandise is kept - it kind of looks like the part of the IKEA store where the larger IKEA items are placed, except the items are small.  Humans roam around and put the correct items into the container at the base of the robot. The human scans in their id to identify themselves, and then the human scans in the item's barcode to confirm with the robot the item being placed.

After all the items in that location are loaded into the robot’s pouch, the robot then goes to the next location by itself autonomously, and displays the next item to be placed, and its location, waiting for the next human nearby to pack the item.

We weren't allowed to take photos inside - so here's a photo outside of me and the guy who gave our class the robotics demo.