Boston Dynamics Stretch

What Stretch is

Stretch is a mobile robot built by Boston Dynamics for warehouse work. The company unveiled it on 29 March 2021 and described it as its first commercial robot designed specifically for warehouse facilities and distribution centers ^[1]. Boston Dynamics presented the debut as its official entry into warehouse automation ^[1].

The first task assigned to Stretch was unloading trucks. Building orders, meaning assembling goods into shipments, was planned for a later stage ^[1].

How it works

Stretch combines a small omni-directional mobile base, a custom lightweight arm and a smart gripper with advanced sensing and controls ^[1]. A later report described the base as having four wheels and the arm as a custom seven-degree-of-freedom design ^[3]. The same report said the robot carries a battery supporting eight hours of continuous operation, and that its suction tray can lift up to 50 pounds ^[3].

The mobile base is what lets the robot travel to where the boxes are instead of requiring the boxes to be brought to a fixed machine; the omni-directional design means it can move sideways and turn in place in tight spaces.

The computer vision system was designed to cut setup work: it identifies boxes without extensive per-customer training ^[1]. According to the 2022 report, that perception software, the Pick vision system, came from Kinema Systems, a machine-vision software company Boston Dynamics acquired in April 2019 ^[3]. In practice this means a customer does not have to teach the robot every new carton it will meet in a shipment.

Debut and early customers

At launch, Boston Dynamics was recruiting pilot customers through a Stretch Early Adopter Program, ahead of commercial deployment in 2022 ^[1]. A later article published by the company said that companies including DHL, Maersk and H&M had integrated Stretch into their daily inbound operations ^[2].

A 2022 report said DHL Supply Chain committed US$15 million, and that Boston Dynamics would deliver a fleet of Stretch robots to DHL's North American warehouses over three years ^[3]. That order turned the early-adopter phase into a multi-year fleet deployment.

Where it fits

Stretch is aimed at a part of warehouse work that repeats with every incoming shipment: taking boxes out of trailers. Because the robot is mobile and its vision system is meant to handle unfamiliar boxes, it is pitched at existing facilities rather than at warehouses rebuilt around fixed automation.

The timeline the company described runs from a pilot program in 2021 to commercial deployment in 2022 and then to fleet orders from logistics operators and retailers ^[1][2][3]. Unloading came first; order building was named as the next task, which would extend the same machine from receiving docks into the part of the warehouse where shipments are put together ^[1].