MuL Technologies
10202 N. Enterprise Drive, Mequon
INDUSTRY: Autonomous carts
EMPLOYEES: 10
multechnologies.com
The debut product from MuL Technologies was not intended as a solution to the social distancing needs of the COVID-19 era.
As it turns out, however, the Mobile Autonomous Robotic Cart – or MARC – is pretty good at helping employees keep their distance from each other in warehouses or on the factory floor.
The real reason the team at MuL (pronounced “mule”) developed MARC was to meet their own internal needs at sister company GMI Solutions. The company used carts internally and was looking for ways to make them more efficient. Dan Armbrust, founder and chief executive officer of MuL, said the first instinct was to look externally.
“All the other solutions we saw were much more expensive and they were really overkill for what we needed,” he said.
What GMI needed was something that could go between a handful of different points and be easy to use. The team set about building what became MARC. It uses proximity sensors, high-resolution depth cameras and a 360-degree LIDAR laser device to navigate between user-defined points in a facility. It operates without connecting to WiFi and programming it is as simple as changing radio presets in a car.
“We wanted something super easy and I think we’ve accomplished that,” Armbrust said.
MuL Technologies, which was officially registered with the state in August 2019, also accomplished something else: winning the Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce Coolest Thing Made in Wisconsin contest this year.
The contest results were announced in mid-October. To win, the cart received more support than nano preemie diapers made by Kimberly-Clark in Neenah, electric rope shovels made by Caterpillar Global Mining in South Milwaukee and adaptive clothing made by C.C. moo LLC in Stoughton.
This year’s Coolest Thing Made in Wisconsin contest was the fifth iteration. Previous winners included the Big Boy All-Weather Rifle from Henry Repeating Arms, the Sea Salt Caramel Pecan Kringle from Uncle Mike’s Bake Shoppe, the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle from Oshkosh Corp., and the Milwaukee Eight Engine from Harley-Davidson.
“I was blown away by how creative the state is and some of the great ideas that are out there,” Armbrust said.
He added the MARC likely resonated as a unique product that fills a niche many manufacturers can relate to. Other contest entrants have contacted MuL to learn more about how MARC could benefit their operations, he said.
MARC has a maximum load capacity of 200 pounds and is intended for tasks like moving tools between CNC machines, taking packages from receiving into the warehouse or routing products from inspection into shipping. The idea is to save employees from having to waste time walking between departments or areas.
“We really want to help supplement the associates,” Armbrust said.
One of the markets MuL is initially targeting with MARC is small and medium manufacturers who might otherwise be priced out of some of the more advanced automated cart systems.
“The other systems out there are still very expensive,” said Bob Grabon, chief technology officer at MuL Technologies.
Armbrust notes that MARC’s price, just under $10,000, means that in certain cases departments can buy it without seeking additional authorizations. At 40 hours per week, the price works out to less than $5 per hour over a year. With an easy setup, the cart can quickly be put to work to recover that cost, while other systems can take longer to set up.
“They’re all very good products, but they’re just set up differently,” Armbrust said. “They’re very complex.”
Of course, the prospect of any autonomous cart roaming a factory floor could raise safety concerns for many people. Grabon said MARC uses LED lights and audio cues to let people know when it is moving and its sensors, cameras and LIDAR give it a solid understanding of its surroundings, including whether something is a stationary object, like a wall, or a moving object, like a person.
He also noted MuL benefited from testing and developing MARC in its own manufacturing environment.
“We’ve been able to prove out that this really does work and it works well,” Grabon said.
Armbrust said initially many people look to challenge the technology to see how it reacts to their presence, helping develop a level of comfort.
“What we see happen as you adopt this technology is people tend to work with it,” he said.
