So Let's Talk About Robots and Logistics

In September 2019, I presented at the RIA's first Autonomous Mobile Robot (AMR) Conference in Louisville, Kentucky. In my presentation titled "Roadmaps and Roadblocks for AMRs in Logistics." I talked about the opportunities that existed for AMRs in the World of Logistics. The talk was focused very much on the technical side and how to address logistic operations beyond just warehousing. I touched a bit on the role humans play in all of this, but not as much as I could have.

Well now thanks to the fine people at WTWH Media, publisher of The Robot Report, I got the opportunity to address more of the human side of Robots in Logistics via their annual RoboBusiness event. On June 25th, I will give a new talk. For this one, I titled it "How Robots Are Succeeding (and Failing) in the World of Logistics." However, I really wanted to call it "How Robots Are Succeeding (and Failing) in the World of Logistics Due To Humans Doing The Right Things (Or Completely Messing It All Up)," but I couldn't fit it all onto my title slide.

Now due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I won't be able to give this talk from the RoboBusiness stage, but I will still be giving it thanks to RoboBusiness going online this year as RoboBusiness Direct.

So what will I be talking about? As the title suggest, I will be highlighting where we as an industry are having successes in deploying robots into logistic operations. Many of these successes have been well documented in the press. However, what about the failures? Those don't appear that much in the press until a company completely collapses and even then not all of the missteps are listed out that lead to that company shutting its doors. So I will discuss where I have seen people fall of the rails when it comes to getting robots into logistics.

Part of the inspiration of this talk came from an earlier meeting in 2019 with members of the academic community while working on the new 2020 US Robotics Roadmap in Chicago. I found it fascinating how many of them talked about how they could only publish their successes and not their failure. My response to that was "So what prevents others from doing the same thing, wasting time and resources, to just fail again?" If we know where others have failed, the hope would be we learn from that and not do the same exact thing again. My team at FedEx document our successes and our failures. Failures create Opportunities, but that is only if you learn from those failures. By following this philosophy, we increase our wins and minimize our losses.

My hope is that by pointing out some of these failures, the larger robot and logistics communities can start to address them and work beyond them. By doing that we should see more successes and therefore more deployments. A rising tide lifts all ship

I look forward to talking to everyone on June 25th. To sign up for my talk and all the other RoboBusiness Directs, just click here.