Mick Mountz, Peter Wurman, Raffaello D'Andrea

• Mick Mountz graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1987 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering.
• He began his career in 1987 as a mechanical engineer at Motorola and later moved to computer integrated manufacturing systems at Motorola Semiconductor Systems.
• From 1996 to 1999, he worked as Product Marketing Manager at Apple after completing his MBA at Harvard Business School in 1996.
• He returned to logistics in 1999 when he accepted a position at Webvan. It was there that he became aware of the challenges of efficient order fulfillment.
• Mountz is a member of the MIT Corporation and Chair of the Visiting Committee on Mechanical Engineering and on the Board of Directors of The Engine Accelerator.
• He also serves as a board member of Verity, an automation and logistics company founded by Raffaello D'Andrea in 2014.
• Mountz is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Inventors Hall of Fame. He holds more than 60 US patents.

• Peter Wurman earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1987 and a Master of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan just one year later.
• Wurman completed two more degree programs at the same university, earning a Master of Science in Computer Science in 1996 and a PhD in Computer Science in 1999.
• Wurman is a co-founder and was head of the technology department at Kiva Systems.
• He has also held various positions at North Carolina State University, including assistant professor of computer science from 1999 to 2005 and associate professor of computer science from 2005 to 2007.
• He is currently executive director of Sony AI. Wurman holds more than 60 US patents and has written more than 70 academic papers.

• Raffaello D'Andrea is a Canadian-Italian-Swiss professor, engineer, artist and entrepreneur known for his groundbreaking work in robotics and automation.
• After receiving his PhD from Caltech, he joined Cornell University as an assistant professor.
• He built the systems engineering program and led the Cornell robot soccer team to four RoboCup World Championships - the most prestigious AI and robotics competition in the world.
• In 2013, he co-founded ROBO Global, the world's first AI and robotics exchange-traded fund.
• In 2014, he founded Verity, a company that provides AI-powered systems for autonomous inventory tracking and mobile intelligence, further demonstrating his impact on supply chains and logistics.
• D'Andrea is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Inventors Hall of Fame and has been honored with the Engelberger Robotics Award and the IEEE Robotics and Automation Award.
• His viral TED and research videos provide insight into the world of engineering, robotics and computer science.
• He is named as an inventor on over 100 patents worldwide.

• With their developments for Kiva Systems, which was founded in the USA in 2003, Mountz, Wurman and D'Andrea have enabled numerous e-commerce companies to make same-day, efficient and error-free deliveries of goods. Logistics employees no longer walk along shelves looking for orders, but autonomous mobile robots (AMR) move a shelf with goods to the picking stations. 
• The demise of e-commerce provider Webvan in the USA in 2001 was also the birth of the idea of the Mobile Robotic Fulfillment System. Mountz attributed the decline of his former employer to inflexible intralogistics systems and high order fulfillment costs. This inspired the American to develop a method for picking, packing and shipping orders that could deliver any item to any logistics employee at any time.
• To realize his idea, Mountz sought the help of AI and software expert Peter Wurman and robotics and AI pioneer Raffaello D'Andrea and founded Distrobot together with his two colleagues in 2003. This became Kiva Systems in 2005. Together they developed the mobile fulfillment system Kiva (US patent number 8,649,899).
• At the heart of the patent are mobile transport robots (Autonomous Mobile Robots, AMRs for short), which ensure the continuous movement of goods on small shelves between the storage areas and the picking stations. The advantage: employees no longer have to walk up to 15 kilometers every day to look for the ordered goods on the shelves. With the Mobile Robotic Fulfillment System, the stock is grouped in the middle of the warehouse instead. The employees are located at picking stations around the warehouse. 
• By 2012, customers included dozens of companies, including Walgreens, Staples and Gap. However, the largest customer became Amazon, which bought the company in March 2012 for 775 million US dollars. In August 2015, the company changed its name from Kiva Systems LLC to Amazon Robotics LLC. The company aims to deploy 800,000 mobile robots in the e-commerce giant's distribution centers worldwide by 2024.
• The system has been very well received in the intralogistics industry and has been copied and further developed many times over the past ten years. Similar systems are now also available from other providers worldwide.

Copyright: National Inventors Hall of Fame (NHIF)

Photos: Sebastian Gabsch/Logistics Hall of Fame