How Calmantech Goals to Beat Low-cost Robots with Smarter Design

Within the high-stakes world of logistics, house is cash—and mobility is all the pieces. Conventional warehouse robots typically wrestle in tight areas, slowing down operations or forcing expensive redesigns. Calmantech, a Korean robotics firm, thinks it has a greater means ahead. At CES 2026, it’ll promote its new Ball Whell Know-how robotic sequence, the CMB Circulate AI: a compact, omnidirectional cellular robotic platform constructed for the subsequent technology of high-efficiency distribution facilities and manufacturing processes.

The issue Calmantech got down to clear up is evident: warehouses are getting extra crowded, and the demand for sooner throughput retains rising. Most legacy robots depend on fastened paths or huge turning circles, which doesn’t work effectively within the slim corridors and compact layouts of some achievement facilities. People can pivot and switch inside a three-foot-wide aisle—why not robots?

Sadly, there’s a extreme scarcity of (human) labor in lots of elements of the world, together with South Korea, and the necessity for robots has by no means been better in some areas.

Enter the CMB-90 (photograph above). This robotic stands out due to its “Ball Wheel Know-how,” which has similarities in idea to the ball mechanism utilized in old-school laptop mice with an precise ball inside. Somewhat than rolling on fastened wheels, the CMB-90 glides throughout flooring utilizing friction-based ball wheels that permit for motion in any path—ahead, sideways, or a spin in place. This makes the robotic particularly nimble in confined areas, reducing down journey time and rising the quantity of usable warehouse flooring.

The innovation doesn’t cease at motion. The CMB-90 helps a payload of as much as 90 kilograms. Whereas it will probably transfer in any path, the robotic is optimized for ahead movement, assisted by a strong imaginative and prescient system: a two RGB digital camera module within the entrance, and extra cameras within the again, left, and proper. This setup offers it a large subject of view for impediment avoidance and spatial consciousness, even in dynamic environments.

Like many trendy warehouse robots, the CMB-90 communicates by a mesh Wi-Fi community, transmitting information repeatedly for real-time fleet administration. Nevertheless, Calmantech understands that almost all services can not merely substitute their previous infrastructure in a single day. That’s why the CMB-90 is constructed to co-exist with legacy robots, making it simpler for corporations to improve steadily as an alternative of committing to a full system substitute.

Calmantech CEO, Jaehwan Choi (left)

A pure query is whether or not Calmantech’s ball-based mobility is likely to be vulnerable to mud or particles. The corporate acknowledges that, like several friction-based system, cleanliness issues—however says the advantages far outweigh the trade-offs, particularly in new services designed with robotics in thoughts. The corporate says its Ball-Wheel might stand up to industrial situations.

The enterprise problem is stiff. Calmantech is coming into a world market the place Chinese language-made robots dominate on value. However the firm is betting that pace, effectivity, and versatile deployment will win out in the long term, particularly in Europe and the U.S. Their technique focuses on new build-outs first, the place warehouses will be designed from the bottom as much as make the most of CMB-90’s compact footprint and superior agility.

The design lands itself to many adaptation, and Calmantech made positive this platform is customizable and lots of several types of robots will be constructed based mostly on the wheel platform.

Based in Korea, Calmantech is not any stranger to tough environments. Its early work focused growing old industrial zones with declining populations and poor working situations. That historical past has formed its mission: to create robots that may do extra with much less—much less house, much less time, and in the end, much less value.

With the CMB-90, Calmantech isn’t simply making one other warehouse robotic. It’s providing a wiser, extra agile coworker that matches into the trendy logistics puzzle with out asking the entire system to alter. And that is likely to be precisely what the business wants.

Filed in Robots. Learn extra about CES, CES 2026, Korea and Robotics.