Raffaello D’Andrea
Raffaello D’Andrea, Mick Mountz and Peter Wurman dramatically advanced warehouse order fulfillment for e-commerce by creating the Kiva system, which uses thousands of autonomous mobile robots to lift and move racks of inventory shelves.
D’Andrea was born in Pordenone, Italy, and moved to Canada at age 9. His lifelong curiosity and drive to experiment earned him the childhood nickname “Professore.” Though D’Andrea initially had no desire to become a professor, as he entered university, he realized that beyond teaching, research could define his career in academics. In an interview with the National Inventors Hall of Fame®, D’Andrea explained, “I saw how much freedom there is in academia if you choose to exercise that freedom.”
After earning his bachelor’s degree in engineering science from the University of Toronto in 1991 and his master’s and doctorate in electrical engineering from the California Institute of Technology in 1992 and 1997, respectively, D’Andrea chose to pursue robotics. In 2003, D’Andrea, a co-founder of the systems engineering program at Cornell University, and the faculty adviser and system architect of the four-time world champion Cornell robot soccer team, joined Mountz and Wurman at their company, then known as Distrobot, in their efforts to revolutionize order fulfillment.
The trio developed a mobile robotic system that could lift and move racks of inventory shelves to a shipping station where a worker could select items for individual shipments, significantly reducing the time from order placement to shipping. “From a motion perspective, one of the things that strikes you when you watch our Kiva robots moving these pods that are up to 1,000 pounds is just how gracefully they do it,” said D’Andrea. “The acceleration profile, the way that they handle moving the weight around. It turns out that the aesthetics of the motion and how robust and reliable it is are closely tied together.”
From 2003 to 2007, D’Andrea led the systems architecture, robot design, navigation and coordination, and learning-based control algorithms development at the company, which was renamed Kiva Systems in 2005.
In 2008, after having hired many of his former students and collaborators to work at Kiva, D’Andrea returned to academia where he founded the Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control at ETH Zurich. He served as Kiva’s chief technical adviser until 2012. That same year, Amazon bought Kiva and eventually named it Amazon Robotics.
In 2013, D’Andrea co-founded ROBO Global, which launched the world’s first robotics exchange traded fund. In 2014, he cofounded Verity, which creates autonomous indoor drone systems. Verity’s entertainment drone systems have toured with Drake, Metallica, Celine Dion, Justin Bieber and Cirque du Soleil, while its warehouse drone systems are used globally by companies such as IKEA, Maersk and On to automate their inventory.
D’Andrea, an IEEE Fellow named on more than 40 U.S. patents, is the recipient of the 2001 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the 2015 Engelberger Robotics Award for Technology, and the 2016 IEEE Robotics and Automation Award. His TED and research videos, with tens of millions of views, have provided an inspiring view into the world of engineering, robotics and computer science.