The machine does the lifting.
A person does the thinking.
Safra Robotics is building a robot that pulls cases from warehouse racking and builds pallets through the night, driven by a remote operator and learning the job as it goes. This page is a working presentation of that technology — the machine, the pick cycle, the operator link, the training program, and exactly how far along each piece is.
A small counterbalanced lift truck, rebuilt around one job.
Not a humanoid, not an arm on a cart. Every part of the machine exists to do one thing well: take a case out of racking, carry it, and put it down on a pallet — all night, in whatever environment the work lives in.
Base
A low, counterweighted chassis on two independently driven wheels with rear casters. It turns in place in a normal aisle, and its drive power runs through a contactor the safety chain can open at any moment.
Mast & carriage
A carriage climbs the mast on a precision screw to reach racking slots at multiple levels. The lift carries a power-off brake: if anything faults — including the power itself — the load holds exactly where it is.
Reach stage
The whole effector rides a second screw stage that extends it into the rack and out over pallet stacks. The wheels never have to enter the racking — the arms go in, the base stays in the aisle.
Arms & pawls
Two slim arms adjust to the width of each case. Along their inner faces sit one-way pawls: fold-flat hooks that pass a case going in and spring out behind its rear edge. The machine pulls cases — it never has to crush or lift them to move them.
Backstop
A plate at the rear of the fork blades. In transit, the case rides seated against it. At the pallet it becomes the press that slides the case smoothly off the blades and into place.
Sense & control
A camera head streams live video to the operator, and an onboard computer runs the link, the logging, and learned skills. A separate small controller owns the stop chain — the safety layer never shares a brain with anything clever.
Watch one case move from rack to pallet.
The animation below is rendered straight from the engineering model — the same geometry and joint travel as the machine being built, running the full cycle: approach, lift, reach, hook, drag, carry, place.
Approach
The operator drives the machine down the aisle and squares it up to the rack face at the target slot.
Lift
The carriage climbs to slot height, and the arms open to the width of the case. With the load path raised, travel speed is automatically capped to a creep.
Reach
Both arms extend into the slot, sliding along the sides of the case. Nothing touches its top; nothing squeezes it.
Hook
The one-way pawls fold flat as they pass the case, then spring out behind its rear edge. From here the machine owns the back face of the case — that's all it needs.
Drag
The arms retract, sliding the case out of the slot and onto the fork blades, back toward the backstop.
Carry
The carriage lowers to travel height, the machine backs out, turns, and drives to the pallet it's building — case seated against the backstop the whole way.
Place
At the pallet the carriage rises to the target layer and the arms extend once more. The backstop travels with them, pressing the case forward off the blades and into position — a controlled slide, never a drop. The pawls fold flat on the way out so nothing snags.
Reset
Arms open and retract, the carriage drops to travel height, and the machine backs away — lined up for the next slot on the pick list.
Why hooks, not suction?
Vacuum grippers need clean, flat, dry cardboard. Real warehouse cases are dusty, frosted, taped, or shrink-wrapped. A mechanical hook behind the rear edge doesn't care what the surface looks like.
Why not grip from above?
Cases in racking usually have another shelf right above them. The pawls only need a small gap at each side — no top access, no headroom, no crushing force on the box.
A benign failure mode
If a hook slips, the case simply stays where it was. Nothing is squeezed, nothing is dropped from height. The worst outcome of a failed pick is a retry.
Every shift has a person on the controls.
The operator sees through the machine's camera and drives every motion — base, lift, reach, clamp — from a console over the network. The machine contributes reach, precision and tirelessness; the person contributes judgment: which case, which slot, whether something on the floor looks wrong.
- Named and logged. Every session is tied to an identified operator, and every control input is on the record.
- Latency is engineered, not hoped for. The video path is measured glass-to-glass, and a machine doesn't work a real aisle until the link earns it.
- If the link drops, the machine stops — and holds position until the operator is back and has re-checked the scene.
- The console is real software, public today. Download the operator console — operator identity, session logs, pick-task flow, and controller support are already in it.
Before it touches a real case, it works a simulated shift.
The entire job runs first inside a physics simulator loaded with the machine's exact geometry — and deliberately capped at the real hardware's strength and speed, so nothing learned in simulation leans on forces the machine doesn't have. What you see below is that simulator working: raw collision geometry, no cosmetics.
An honest twin
Same geometry as the CAD model, same masses, same force and speed limits as the hardware. When the simulated machine can't do something, that's a finding — not a rendering glitch to paper over.
Lessons before metal
Reverse out of the slot before lowering. Rise to place height before the final approach. Ramp the wheels, never step them. Each rule was learned by breaking it in simulation first.
Skills in stages
Training environments build up like a syllabus: place a case, then pick from a shelf, then full drive-and-stack cycles in a modeled aisle — each stage earned before the next.
Teleoperation isn't the end state. It's the training program.
Every operated shift produces a labeled record of how the work is really done: what the operator saw, what they did, what happened next. The most repetitive spans of the job become scripted skills the operator triggers instead of hand-driving. Over time the machine carries more of each cycle itself, and the operator's role shifts from driving to supervising.
Autonomy here is earned one task at a time, measured by how rarely the operator has to take over — never promised up front. A person stays responsible for every shift.
Built to stop.
One design rule runs through the whole machine: de-energized is the safe state. Power is required to keep it moving — never to make it stop. Anything that faults, faults into a standstill.
Hardware stops, not software promises
Physical e-stops cut motion without asking any computer's permission, and drive power runs through a contactor held closed by the safety chain — any fault in the chain opens it.
The brake clamps on failure
The lift brake engages whenever power is lost — a cut cable, a fault, a dead battery all end the same way: the load holds where it is instead of coasting down.
A watchdog on the link
A dedicated controller supervises the connection between console and machine. Missed heartbeats stop motion, and after a drop the operator re-verifies the scene before anything moves again.
Slow when it matters, loud when it moves
With a load raised, travel speed drops to a creep automatically. In motion, the machine announces itself with a light and tone, the way any powered equipment on a floor should.
Where the project actually stands.
No staged photos, no rented warehouse shoots. This is the honest state of each track, updated as the build moves.
-
VALIDATED
Mechanical design
The machine lives in a parametric engineering model, and every design change re-runs an automated gate suite — stability at worst-case poses, clearance sweeps across the full motion range, load checks at honest limits. A change that fails a gate doesn't ship.
-
RUNNING
Simulation
The full pick-and-stack cycle runs end-to-end in physics simulation under hardware-honest caps, and the staged training environments are built and smoke-tested. Skill training is the current front.
-
PUBLIC
Operator console
The console ships as a Windows installer with operator identity, session logging, pick-task flow, label printing support, and auto-update. Download it or read the release notes.
-
IN PROGRESS
First machine
Being built in San Antonio. The drivetrain is on its way; the frame, mast and effector follow. The design that's being welded is the same one in the model above.
-
NEXT
First real shift
A working machine on a real overnight task, with one number tracked from the first hour: how often the operator has to take over. That number is the honest measure of everything on this page.
Questions, ideas, or a night shift this should run?
The inbox is open — whether that's curiosity about how the pawls work, a facility where a machine like this belongs, or anything in between.