There are some jobs human bodies just weren’t meant to do. Unloading trucks and shipping containers is a repetitive, grueling task—and a big reason warehouse injury rates are more than twice the national average.

Pickle Robot Co. wants its machines to do the heavy lifting. The company’s one-armed robots autonomously unload trailers, lifting boxes weighing up to 50 lb and putting them on conveyor belts for warehouses of all types.

The company name, an homage to Apple Computer Co. (now just Apple), hints at the ambitions of founders A. J. Meyer, Ariana Eisenstein, and Dan Paluska. They want to make the company the technology leader for supply chain automation.

The company’s unloading robots combine generative AI and machine-learning algorithms with sensors, cameras, and machine-vision software to navigate new environments on Day One and improve performance over time. Much of the company’s hardware is adapted from industrial partners. 

The company already works with customers like UPS, Ryobi Tools, and Yusen Logistics to take a load off warehouse workers, freeing them to solve other supply chain bottlenecks in the process.

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