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

Within the high-stakes world of logistics, area is cash—and mobility is every part. 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 Ball Whell Know-how as used within the CMB-90: a compact, omnidirectional warehouse robotic constructed for the subsequent era of high-efficiency distribution facilities.

The issue Calmantech got down to resolve is obvious: warehouses are getting extra crowded, and the demand for sooner throughput retains rising. Most legacy robots depend on fastened paths or vast turning circles, which doesn’t work effectively within the slender 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 higher in some areas.

Enter the CMB-90 (picture 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. Fairly than rolling on fastened wheels, the CMB-90 glides throughout flooring utilizing friction-based ball wheels that permit for motion in any route—ahead, sideways, or a spin in place. This makes the robotic particularly nimble in confined areas, chopping down journey time and rising the quantity of usable warehouse ground.

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 route, the robotic is optimized for ahead movement, assisted by a sturdy imaginative and prescient system: a two RGB digital camera module within the entrance, and extra cameras within the again, left, and proper. This setup provides 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 way of a mesh Wi-Fi community, transmitting information repeatedly for real-time fleet administration. Nevertheless, Calmantech understands that almost all services can not merely exchange 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 firms to improve regularly as a substitute of committing to a full system alternative.

Calmantech CEO, Jaehwan Choi (left)

A pure query is whether or not Calmantech’s ball-based mobility is likely to be liable to mud or particles. The corporate acknowledges that, like all 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 circumstances.

The enterprise problem is stiff. Calmantech is getting into a world market the place Chinese language-made robots dominate on worth. However the firm is betting that velocity, 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 could be designed from the bottom as much as reap the benefits 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 various kinds of robots could be constructed primarily based on the wheel platform.

Based in Korea, Calmantech is not any stranger to troublesome environments. Its early work focused growing older industrial zones with declining populations and poor working circumstances. That historical past has formed its mission: to create robots that may do extra with much less—much less area, much less time, and finally, much less price.

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 fashionable logistics puzzle with out asking the entire system to vary. And that is likely to be precisely what the trade wants.

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