The deployment of robotics for warehouse automation is transformational for logistics and is reshaping the future of manufacturing and warehouse operations. However, automation in robotics has its own set of challenges. One of them is data, as AI and automation thrive on data. Ensuring access to high-quality, diverse datasets for training AI models within robotics is crucial. Gathering, managing, annotating, and analyzing this data can be challenging, especially in dynamic environments.
In this session, Pras Velagapudi, Chief Architect & VP of Innovation at Agility Robotics, and John Black – SVP of Strategy at Brain Corporation, share insights into the lessons learned in the deployment of robotics for warehouse automation. Watch the complete discussion here.
“Designing a robot to be human-centric, not necessarily humanoid, but able to work within human spaces, that means that one of the biggest fixed costs of deploying automation is often time, not the automation itself, but it’s the immigration of automation.”
“The more interesting challenge is finding the right places in the market, triggering into the right places to inject a robot, to create value. It’s very easy in robotics to install a robot into a place where it’s not going to generate value and where you end up needing the same amount of labor to supervise the robot. We’ve spent a lot of time recently finding customers and use cases, specifically focusing on logistics, case manipulation; and specific operations where we know the robot can provide immediate value. We know that the amount of movement, and the types of materials that we are handling are things that don’t work well with other types of automation, and are highly valuable for our customers. It’s really how you navigate commercializing robotic technology”
– Pras Velagapudi, Agility Robotics
“We are being very specific in where we focus. We are focused on having a platform that covers all the applications. We found that robotics is a vertical challenge, from a customer application standpoint. You have to become an expert, just shooting a platform or using it everywhere is not a successful robotics business. The secret sauce of the business aspect is the adoption and being able to do process change and change management with customers, and get people using automation in spaces they weren’t using before.”
– John Black, Brain Corp
Key highlights:
- Adaptation and growth of humanoid robots and their role in warehouse operations
- The primary contributors to the success of deploying robotic systems
- Specific challenges in robotics that need to be solved
- Future of warehouse robotics concerning various models for deploying automation
- Supervised autonomy and the possibility of human intervention
- How is AI reshaping the possibilities within the space of warehouse robotics
