Andover, MA-based Locus Robotics, spun out of 3PL Quiet Logistics in 2015, has raised $26 million in Series C funding, increasing its total to $66 million. The round was led by the venture arm of mobile scanning and printing technology firm Zebra Technologies and Scale Venture Partners.
Deutsche Post unit DHL Supply Chain North America is investing $300 million to increase the level of automation and robotics at 350 of its 430 facilities, to better handle the crush of ecommerce orders. DHL also plans to open a 24,000-square-foot innovation center near Chicago in September 2019.
Locus Robotics, a company spun out of third-party logistics provider Quiet Logistics, has begun production and implementation of a DC-based order fulfillment robot which it sees as a next logical step beyond Kiva. The company’s executives claim its robots can be deployed a few at a time without major facility retrofitting, and will eventually be used in stores as well as DCs.