User:Bschoenb/Voodoorobotics.com

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Voodoo Robotics is a pioneer in wireless pick-to-light for warehouses. Its Cloud Display Devices are an Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) platform for warehouse and supply chain personnel, supporting Pick-To-Light or Put-To-Light, warehouse cart, kitting, packing, shipping, and other use cases. Voodoo Robotics products are patented or patent-pending.^[1]

Cloud Display Devices help improve the efficiency of supply chain staff by enabling them to find and place items more quickly, by providing instructions from the customer's Warehouse Management System (WMS) or Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software.

“Cloud display devices are revolutionary because they are changing up the way our customers can deploy light devices, the range of uses for them, and the economics of deploying them,” said Trevor Blumenau, Voodoo Robotics CEO. “They can be deployed and adapted in a very flexible manner because there is no hard wiring. It is easy to change the devices and their applications, which is perfect for third-party logistics (3PL) operations or other operations that change up their inventories often,” he added. “We aren’t just a pick-to-light system provider as much as we’ve invented a flexible platform for operations to use for their own custom functionality, whether that is pick-to-light, put-to-light, or some other function they need.”^[2]

Voodoo Robotics' focus is to assist parts of the supply chain currently underserved by technology.

“We recognized that companies in the supply chain were not innovating or taking advantage of modern technologies,” Voodoo Robotics CEO Trevor Blumenau told Dallas Innovates. “There are huge barriers besides the simple resistance to change. Any time you change your processes, you run the risk of bringing everything to a grinding halt—in the supply chain, a halt can destroy a company, unlike a halt in R&D, for example. And no-one wants to put their neck on the line, deciding on a new, extremely costly, WMS or ERP. By the time a company does a careful ROI analysis, the state of the art has changed!”^[3]

The Voodoo Robotics architecture has three tiers:

• Server
• Turbos
• Cloud Display Devices

There is also a fourth tier above the server that, with the customer's permission, Voodoo Robotics can use to monitor system uptime and connectivity of servers and devices.^[4]

Implementation

Users can communicate between their Cloud Display Devices and their WMS or ERP using a basic QueryString (or APIs) or REST APIs. Voodoo Robotics will help with API questions.

Cloud Display Devices

The Cloud Display Devices have an e-ink display with up to five lines of custom text; for example, a picker's name, the SKU, and quantity to pick. They may also display arrows, barcodes and QR codes and can play custom tunes. The devices use two AAA batteries that the company estimates can last more than two years, especially with minimal use of light and sound.

A button in the upper right-hand corner lights up in one of six colors that can correspond to a bin color, the picker, type of task, or whatever supports the customer's process. Pickers press the button to turn off the light and acknowledge that the specified task is complete. The customer system then updates inventory or inventory status.

Arrows on the device display enable customers to indicate in which of eight directions a Picker should pick place the item (e.g,, above, below, right, left). They enable the device to support more than location to reduce Picker confusion and reduce costs.

The displays also have have a static mode that enables them to display the same type of information in between tasks without consuming power, e.g., information about product or the status of the order. The static mode does not make use of light or sound.

The devices come with a ruggedize case four neodymium magnets for mounting. The devices can also mount with screws, zip ties, hook & loop fasteners, industrial double-sided tape or other methods.

Turbos

Turbos act as routers that communicate securely and bidirectionally between the wireless Cloud Display Devices and the Big Block Server, through the customer's ethernet or WIFI. Voodoo Robotics has two versions of the Turbo:

• Turbo POE-T, which has a touch display for configuration and Cloud Display access information. It can use Power over Ethernet (POE) directly.
• Turbo, a version without a screen that can connect to a monitor and keyboard. It requires AC power but can use Power over Ethernet (POE) with a POE splitter.

Turbos have a range of about 75 feet, but should be approximately 50 feet apart to allow overlapping ranges for optimum performance.^[5]

Server

Voodoo Robotics provides two server deployment solutions to communicate with the Cloud Display Devices:

• SKU-Keeper, a multi-tenant cloud server (www.sku-keeper.com) on Amazon Web Services for up to 100 devices per company.
• Big Block Server software that installs within the customer's firewall or cloud. Customers who choose to deploy the Big Block server on-premise do not have an internet dependency, meaning that this portion of supply chain operations may continue unhindered even if the internet is unavailable, as long as the server and warehouse intranet have power. This is also important for companies that want an air gap for network security purposes.

Voodoo Robotics Partners and Integrators

Voodoo Robotics offers an open API for integration purposes.

Currently, the company is developing a network of best-practice, lean manufacturing-focused systems integrators in North America and Australia. SVT Robotics is one of the partners in this network.^[6]

Company History

The founder and CEO of Voodoo Robotics is Trevor I. Blumenau, a professional engineer who holds a Master of Science in Robotics from the University of California, Berkeley and a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. He has over 50 patents and patents pending. Prior to Voodoo Robotics, Blumenau founded NuWeb (aka Pacific Web) in 1995, where he invented technology for internet advertising measurement. Nielson Media Research acquired NuWeb in 1997, and Blumenau continued to work at NMR as a director of engineering and then director of strategic planning for 13 years.

The first product that Voodoo Robotics introduced was an Automated Storage and Retrieval System (ASRS) with a real-time, web-based 3D interface and modeling built in a language that Blumenau invented, Warehouse Design Language (WDL). It displayed the prototype for the ASRS at its company headquarters from about 2013 until 2020.

The company shifted from physical robotics to helping to automate and improve the human aspects of the supply chain with its Cloud Display devices.

In 2017, Voodoo Robotics introduced the first version of its Cloud Display Device, that it now refers to as its classic device. It uses 2 AA batteries and power lasts about 1 year. It used a hardware as a service model^[7] that is no longer available, but grandfathered for existing customers. Customers may also continue to arrange a lease model through a third-party integrator.

In late 2019, Voodoo Robotics introduced a new version of the Cloud Display Devices, aka "Modern Devices" that employ ePaper and 2 AAA batteries.^[8] Because the new device consumes so little power (ePaper continues to display even without power).

Applicable Patents and Patents Pending

• US application 20190266566, Blumenau, Trevor I. (Plano, Texas), "Shelf Tag Apparatus, Systems, and Methods for Inventory Picking and Tracking", published 2019-08-29 

• US patent 10195663, Blumenau, Trevor I. (Plano, Texas); Voodoo Robotics, Inc. & Hoefkin, Carlos A. (Dallas, Texas); Voodoo Robotics, Inc., "Robotic Storage and Retrieval Systems and Methods", published 2014-08-07, issued 2019-02-05 

• US patent 10169058, Blumenau, Trevor I. (Plano, Texas); Voodoo Robotics, Inc., "Scripting Language For Robotic Storage And Retrieval Design For Warehouses", published 2017-03-30, issued 2019-01-01 

Other worldwide patents are pending.

References

External links

• Voodoo Robotics
• "Voodoo Robotics Introduces Cloud Display Devices"
• "Founder and CEO Trevor Blumenau is giving warehouses and factories a big tech upgrade with his company's wireless technology."