With Zalando and CEVA, dual-arm robots sort returned clothing in Germany and Poland

According to Sereact, its Cortex platform identifies, picks and sorts items it has never seen, with no training for each individual item and no list of items fixed in advance.

According to the article, returned items often arrive badly packed and creased. Each one is in a different condition, which rules out programming the robots in advance in the conventional way.

The deployment is supplied under a “Robotics-as-a-Service” model. It is the first operational step in the collaboration between the partners.

Chris Walton, vice-president of contract logistics at CEVA Logistics, explains what makes returns hard to handle: unpredictable volumes, manual quality checks, seasonality, loss of value in the items and a very high unit cost.