Meet Geek+ on stand 430

Geek+, a global leader in advanced robotics and AI technologies, launched its three year "CARE" strategy at its inaugural Global Smart Logistics Summit in Nanjing.

The gathering of nearly 400 global clients and technology partners across a wide range of industries discussed key issues and technology trends impacting the global supply chain. Geek+ CARE, namely Customer focus, Artificial Intelligence, Robots as a Service and Ecosystem-Enabling, will be the engine of the company's global growth in the next three years.

In his keynote speech, Yong Zheng, founder and CEO at Geek+, said: "Our vision is to become a global AI robotics leader, to build a smart infrastructure and service network based on robotics technology and strategic partnerships, integrating more and more technology and industrial partners to help customers achieve a digital, agile and intelligent supply chain. To realize this vision, we will steer our growth in four dimensions: customer focus, technology innovation based on AI R&D, business innovation through Robot as a service business model and industry integration with a supply chain ecosystem. The CARE strategy."

Labour-intensive industries are being transformed by technologies, impacted by lack of available labour and increasing costs. In parallel, high requirements for personalisation and diversification have made product life cycles shorter, bringing business instability and demand issues to which rigid automation systems are not adapted.

"For companies in retail, apparel and manufacturing, agility is a now a vital need. This is why flexible and scalable robot systems and shared-service models will dominate. We are working with our partners to apply AI, robotics and Internet of Things where they can have the biggest impact. Logistics is the logical first step," said Yong Zheng.

Artificial Intelligence technologies are at the heart of Geek+ solutions, with an R&D team of over 400 engineers including a dedicated AI algorithm research team. With CARE, Geek+ will focus on two main directions for AI R&D:

• Robots AI: Improving the autonomy of robot navigation and perception: getting the robot to listen, think and see better.
• Logistics AI: making logistics smarter and more efficient, solving comprehensive optimization issues in robot scheduling, inventory management, and order execution.

Geek+ will also work on specific application scenarios in different industries, accumulating data to continuously improve robot and system capabilities through machine learning.

Geek+ has also pledged to invest no less than $150 million in robotics and AI R&D over the next three years.

With its Robot-as-a-Service (RaaS) business model, Geek+ operates over 200,000 m2 of smart warehouses and has built a shared-network of thousands of robots. This robot-sharing service model helps customers reduce initial investment and lowers market entry barriers, while improving efficiency and decreasing overall operating costs. It makes robots attainable and affordable to businesses of all sizes. Under CARE, Geek+ will further expand its robot service network to help customers build reliable and efficient warehousing logistics capabilities in a very short time, respond quickly to market demand and seize business opportunities.

During the summit, Geek+ unveiled the first act of CARE: Geek+ Cloud Brain. The Geek+ Cloud Brain is a cloud-based application Platform as a Service (aPaaS) system which allows customers to easily reconfigure their solutions and deploy them through the cloud, freely dispatching robots and various devices in a highly flexible and intelligent system. Geek+ Cloud Brain significantly reduces the difficulty of implementing and operating smart logistics, making AI at your fingertips.

Geek+ Cloud Brain has three major advantages:

• Close to no coding: As an aPaaS platform, Geek+ Cloud allows users to drag and drop modules without almost no need to code, through an easy-to-use system interface. The customer can quickly develop and integrate features to tweak and even redesign the solution to respond to business changes.
• Robot and other device operating system: Users can schedule and command different types of robots and equipment through the OS features realizing the digitization and automation of the solution. Hundreds of different type of devices can work together, including mobile robots, forklifts and conveyor belts.
• Cloud-computing service model: Customers can opt to have the solution running on the cloud. The cloud platform can be a private cloud or operated by global cloud providers, making the system scalable, easy to deploy and easy to maintain.

Hongbo Li, co-founder and chief technology officer at Geek+, said: "Smart logistics robotics technologies have rapidly developed in recent years, but the complexity of the system and abundance of dark data make them difficult to operate. In reality, the solutions can require many engineers to operate them efficiently, which hinders cost reduction and efficiency gains. With Geek+ Cloud Brain, we have solved this problem, making AI technology accessible and easy to use, at the tip of the customer's fingers."

Geek+ Cloud Brain is already implemented in Geek+ warehouses, and can serve customers around the world. "The system is ready to support the millions of orders we will process on the 11/11 Shopping Festival," added Hongbo