Honeywell, Morris Plains, N.J., announced a strategic collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pa., to advance artificial intelligence (AI) and robotic technologies to help distribution centers address rapid growth in e-commerce.

The initiative brings together Honeywell Intelligrated, a division of Honeywell Safety and Productivity Solutions, and Carnegie Mellon’s National Robotics Engineering Center to advance robotics solutions to improve productivity and performance in fulfilling orders.

“It is becoming increasingly difficult to staff supply chain operations fast enough to satisfy the growth in e-commerce. Developing advanced machine learning capabilities and applying it to critical distribution center applications is a key enabler for our customers,” says Pieter Krynauw, president of Honeywell Intelligrated. “Our industry expertise coupled with the research capability of Carnegie Mellon accelerates our ability to bring advanced technology to market at scale and deliver much-needed capacity and productivity gains for distribution centers through digital transformation.”

“With this initiative, we are combining leading-edge robotic technology from Carnegie Mellon with Honeywell Intelligrated’s logistics and industrial robotics expertise,” says Dr. Herman Herman, director of the National Robotics Engineering Center at Carnegie Mellon University. “In a period of such extreme growth for robotics, it is vital to have the technical platform along with the domain expertise and real-world data to push technology forward to commercial maturity.”

The Honeywell and Carnegie Mellon University collaboration will focus on developing a next-generation architecture to control and operate multiple robotic applications. The platform uses machine learning to enable critical decision-making capabilities, intelligent motion, collision avoidance and reliable sensing making it practical to deploy advanced robotics in dynamic, unpredictable environments.