In context
By late 2025, industrial robotics was pushing toward greater autonomy in unstructured environments, with traditional bin picking systems still relying on fixed overhead cameras and pre-calculated grasp points. These setups were often costly, rigid, and prone to disruption when bins moved or parts were partially hidden, limiting their effectiveness in real factory conditions.
What was reported
Inbolt introduced a next-generation bin picking solution that mounts a 3D camera directly on the robot arm, powered by proprietary AI guidance models running on Nvidia hardware. The system continuously perceives and adapts in real time, eliminating the need for perfect pre-defined grasps by offering an infinite number of grasp strategies.
The solution mimics human behavior through a three-step process: picking any accessible side of a part, analyzing the object while held in the gripper (in-hand localization), and continuously refining the trajectory during motion for accurate placement. This closed-loop approach enables adaptation to part variability and bin movement.
Reported performance includes an average processing time of under one second per pick and up to 95 percent success rates in live manufacturing. The system is already deployed across more than five factories, demonstrating high uptime and throughput. Key benefits cited are flexibility with bins of any size or position, speed, reliability, affordability (one camera per robot, not per bin), and scalability across stations or factories.
“We designed our solution to adapt in real time, able to see, grasp, and adjust the way a human would.”
Why it mattered
This development signaled a shift away from rigid, camera-heavy bin picking architectures toward more flexible, on-arm vision systems that could handle real-world variability. For manufacturers, the potential for lower hardware costs, faster setup, and robust performance in unstructured environments pointed to a more practical path to autonomous production.
Source: Robotics & Automation News (roboticsandautomationnews.com) · Published 2025-12-30 · “Inbolt launches ‘human-like bin picking solution’ powered by on-arm AI vision”