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Jan is the CEO and co-founder of Brightpick, where he sets the overall strategy and is…
Articles by Jan
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Jan Zizka reposted thisJan Zizka reposted thisSales engineers are a key part of every Brightpick customer journey. No two warehouses are the same. Each has different priorities around throughput, storage density, labor savings, budget, and physical constraints. That means every project requires a different approach, from analyzing operational data and modeling layouts to finding the right balance between performance, cost, and flexibility. And that’s exactly what makes the role exciting, according to Peter Matus, one of our Senior Sales Engineers in Europe. Every warehouse is a new problem to solve. Interested in solving them with us? Check out our open roles on the Brightpick careers page.
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Jan Zizka reposted thisJan Zizka reposted thisCollaborative robotics in action 🦾 Tote picking using Photoneo, now part of Zebra Technologies 3D scanning and VGR (vision guided robotics) solution is used to manipulate the totes with precision. Come and see our solution at VISION - World's leading trade fair for machine vision in Stuttgart Germany using FANUC Europe cobot at our booth 8B40.
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Jan Zizka shared this💤 Robots don’t sleep. So why do we still act as if they do? The answer is that automation is not the same as autonomy. Existing automation can already automated systems end-to-end, but if every exception or manual handoff requires someone on site, it is still tied to a staffed shift. AI is starting to change that. And once robots stop depending on human shifts, the economics of automation change completely. 👉 In my latest newsletter, I explain why lights-out automation is a ladder, not a jump, and why extending productive hours may be one of the biggest ROI unlocks in robotics.
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Jan Zizka reposted thisJan Zizka reposted thisEver wonder what it actually takes to build the warehouse of the future? 🤖📦 It turns out, the industry might be overcomplicating it. Brightpick CEO Jan Zizka explains why the secret to scaling automation isn't building more complex physical robots, but making them infinitely smarter with AI. If you're in supply chain, e-commerce, or just love practical tech innovation, you need to hear this perspective. Watch the full clip below to see how AI is quietly changing the game. 👇
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Jan Zizka posted thisHere’s why we deliberately build simple robots: In robotics, complexity is tempting. More joints. More sensors. Better grippers. Big, sophisticated robots look more capable, more impressive, and frankly, just cooler. But in production, every additional component adds cost, maintenance, and another potential point of failure. That is why, at Brightpick, we made a deliberate choice early on: keep hardware simple, push the complexity into AI and software, and relentlessly optimize for reliability and unit economics. That philosophy shows up everywhere in our stack: • Two-axis SCARA instead of six-axis arms • Vacuum grippers instead of robotic hands • Wheels instead of legs • Totes instead of unstructured shelves • One shared robotic platform instead of many specialized machines The hardware may look simpler, but that does not mean the engineering is. The hard problems move into software: perception, grasping, navigation, fleet orchestration, recovery, and continuous learning. The advantage is that software can improve across the entire fleet without adding permanent mechanical cost or maintenance. Customers do not buy complexity. They buy throughput, reliability, and ROI. And it’s exactly this philosophy that has helped us scale to almost 500+ robots in production on long-term customer contracts.
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Jan Zizka reposted thisJan Zizka reposted this“Can you pick my product?” It’s one of the most common questions we hear from customers. The answer is: in most cases, yes. Brightpick robots can pick 90%+ of SKUs in e-commerce, pharma, and grocery, from boxes and bottles to bags and other tricky shapes. So we’re launching a new series: Will It Pick? 🤖 Each episode, we’ll put a different product to the test. Fifth up: Pickles Will it pick? Watch to find out.
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Jan Zizka reposted thisJan Zizka reposted thisThe biggest mistake in warehouse automation? 👉 Choosing the most impressive system instead of the one that actually fits your operation. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to automation. The right solution depends on your priorities, budget, and physical warehouse constraints. That’s where our sales engineering team comes in. They work with customers to understand their operation, model different scenarios, and design the automation approach that best balances performance, cost, and risk. Because the best automation system isn’t the one that looks best on paper. It’s the one that works best in your warehouse.
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Jan Zizka reposted thisJan Zizka reposted thisPicking in Motion is coming to all our installations 🚀 Autopicker now begins traveling to its next pick location immediately after retrieving a storage tote, completing the pick while on the move. It then drops the first storage tote into an empty slot near the next pick location and retrieves the next one. The result: 15–20 seconds saved per pick, less aisle congestion, and a major increase in robot productivity. We are not building robots to mimic humans. We are building robots that surpass them.
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Jan Zizka shared thisSafety may be a bigger barrier to scaling humanoids than either cost or autonomy. Humanoids need continuous power to stay upright. The universal emergency response in robotics today – cutting power – is exactly what makes an unstable robot fall, turning the safety mechanism itself into the hazard. The first time a robot falls on a baby or dog will be the end of that company. It won’t matter what waivers anybody signed. In a factory, that is manageable with physical separation such as fencing or light curtains. In a home, it is a completely different risk profile. A single incident in a home could tarnish the entire category. Safety is not just an engineering problem. It is also an insurance, regulatory, and deployment problem. Until there are clear safety standards and insurers are comfortable underwriting the risk, humanoid deployments may remain constrained to tightly controlled environments – defeating the biggest argument for humanoids in the first place. There is, of course, a much simpler solution: using wheels. The real breakthrough in many applications is not walking on two legs, but manipulating the physical world. AMRs already benefit from mature safety approaches and predictable behavior around people. Why reinvent the wheel (literally) when the base is not where most of the value is created?
Jan Zizka replied to a comment
1w
Herbert ten Have I saw Agility too - clever idea, but realistically what's the point? turning off whenever there's a human nearby defeats the whole premise of humanoids being easy and low-cost to deploy in any environment
Jan Zizka commented on a post
1w
Cool visualizations. We effectively have the same within our Brightpick systems. But it can be combined with this for an even wider view of the warehouse
Jan Zizka replied to a comment
2w
Abhishek Sharma customer preference. we can split out totes up to 4 ways
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Jan Zizka liked thisJan Zizka liked thisSales engineers are a key part of every Brightpick customer journey. No two warehouses are the same. Each has different priorities around throughput, storage density, labor savings, budget, and physical constraints. That means every project requires a different approach, from analyzing operational data and modeling layouts to finding the right balance between performance, cost, and flexibility. And that’s exactly what makes the role exciting, according to Peter Matus, one of our Senior Sales Engineers in Europe. Every warehouse is a new problem to solve. Interested in solving them with us? Check out our open roles on the Brightpick careers page.
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Jan Zizka liked thisJan Zizka liked thisEver wonder what it actually takes to build the warehouse of the future? 🤖📦 It turns out, the industry might be overcomplicating it. Brightpick CEO Jan Zizka explains why the secret to scaling automation isn't building more complex physical robots, but making them infinitely smarter with AI. If you're in supply chain, e-commerce, or just love practical tech innovation, you need to hear this perspective. Watch the full clip below to see how AI is quietly changing the game. 👇
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Jan Zizka liked thisJan Zizka liked thisGXO Logistics, Inc. said something on their last earnings call that I don't think got enough attention. Zero humanoids in production this year. 45 pilots running. ROI not there yet. This is one of the biggest logistics operators in the country, running actual live tests with actual robots, and the headline number is zero. Meanwhile their real 2026 plan, the one they're actually spending money on, is 20,000 traditional AMRs. Not humanoids. I talk to a lot of people building and hiring in this space. The gap between what gets funded on a demo stage and what a company like GXO will actually put on a warehouse floor is bigger than most of the LinkedIn posts about humanoids would have you believe. Doesn't mean humanoids aren't coming. Just means we're not there yet, and GXO just said so on the record. #humanoids #robotics #logistics Maxwell Bond
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Jan Zizka liked thisJan Zizka liked thisGXO has completed 45 humanoid pilots and is approaching its 46th test. Production deployments in 2026: zero. CEO Patrick Kelleher says the technology is improving, but dexterity, task speed and ROI still have to catch up. Meanwhile, GXO is moving ahead with plans to deploy robots at scale across its network. The gap between what companies are willing to test and what they're willing to deploy may be one of the most important numbers to watch in humanoid robotics. Read more at businessofautomation.fm: https://lnkd.in/eFuXjBMv
Experience & Education
Publications
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ACM CHI EA 2012 -- SpeckleEye: Gestural Interaction for Embedded Electronics in Ubiquitous Computing
ACM CHI EA 2012
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ACM Siggraph 2011 -- CATRA: Cataract Maps with Snap-on Eyepiece for Mobile Phones
ACM Siggraph 2011
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ACM Siggraph 2011 -- Second skin: motion capture with actuated feedback for motor learning
ACM Siggraph 2011
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ACM UIST 2011 -- SpeckleSense: Fast, Precise, Low-cost and Compact Motion Sensing using Laser Speckle
ACM UIST 2011
Honors & Awards
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Vision Systems Design Innovators Awards: The Platinum Award
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Vision Award 2018
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