Solving Supplychain Woes With Robot-Enabled Humans

The Pandemic has propelled e-commerce to stratospheric heights with sales skyrocketing over 30% in 2020, and close to 40% in 2021. Globally, online shopping jumped to nearly $30 trillion led by Alibaba and Amazon. This consumer behavior shift has accelerated the adoption of warehouse automation technologies with packaging systems estimated to climb to $69 billion by 2025. At the center of this revolution are unmanned systems. Robots excel at dull repetitive tasks (like moving pallets), however, humans still exceed their mechanical counterparts in delicate creative tasks that require high levels of tactile dexterity. This paradox has led many roboticists to take a dramatically different approach to use mechatronics to streamline productivity. In place of traditional robots to augment labor, these innovators outfit workers with cyborg appendages to increase employee productivity. The best example of this approach is German Bionic with its CrayX exoskeleton.