Case Study: Bastian Solutions accelerates development and builds lightweight, adaptive fulfillment robots with Carbon

Improving On-Demand Fulfillment With Autonomous Handling Robot

Bastian Solutions set out to build an agile on‑demand fulfillment robot — the Shuttle System — that could pick a wide range of retail items with human‑like, adaptive grippers while also reducing weight, energy use, and customization costs. To meet those challenges they partnered with Carbon, using Carbon EPU 40 for pliable, resilient gripper surfaces and Carbon RPU 70 and Carbon’s digital manufacturing capabilities to replace traditional metal parts and enable rapid, cost‑effective customization.

Carbon provided the materials and Digital Manufacturing platform that enabled Bastian’s proprietary “Shark Fin” adaptive grippers and numerous polymer replacement parts, produced via Carbon-enabled digital manufacturing (with Fast Radius as a production partner). The result: nearly half the robot’s BOM was digitally manufactured, parts were produced in days not months, development time was cut by two years, production costs were reduced by about $100,000, and the lighter polymer parts lowered heat generation and energy needed for cooling — delivering faster time‑to‑market and greater operational efficiency for Bastian Solutions.

Bastian Solutions