Amazon.com Inc. To Buy Kiva Systems Inc. for $775 million.

The all-cash deal for closely held Kiva will close in the second quarter, Seattle-based Amazon said today in a statement. Kiva’s orange robots, which can slide under shelves and bins of products, are used by Quidsi Inc. -- the company behind Soap.com and Diapers.com that Amazon acquired for about $545 million last year.

Kiva, whose headquarters will remain in North Reading, Massachusetts, will help Amazon make shipping more efficient, the company said.

“Amazon has long used automation in its fulfillment centers, and Kiva’s technology is another way to improve productivity by bringing the products directly to employees to pick, pack and stow,” Dave Clark, vice president of global customer fulfillment at Amazon, said in the statement.

Bloomberg has the entire financial details here.

 

Featured Product

3D Vision: Ensenso B now also available as a mono version!

3D Vision: Ensenso B now also available as a mono version!

This compact 3D camera series combines a very short working distance, a large field of view and a high depth of field - perfect for bin picking applications. With its ability to capture multiple objects over a large area, it can help robots empty containers more efficiently. Now available from IDS Imaging Development Systems. In the color version of the Ensenso B, the stereo system is equipped with two RGB image sensors. This saves additional sensors and reduces installation space and hardware costs. Now, you can also choose your model to be equipped with two 5 MP mono sensors, achieving impressively high spatial precision. With enhanced sharpness and accuracy, you can tackle applications where absolute precision is essential. The great strength of the Ensenso B lies in the very precise detection of objects at close range. It offers a wide field of view and an impressively high depth of field. This means that the area in which an object is in focus is unusually large. At a distance of 30 centimetres between the camera and the object, the Z-accuracy is approx. 0.1 millimetres. The maximum working distance is 2 meters. This 3D camera series complies with protection class IP65/67 and is ideal for use in industrial environments.