The Robotics’ Second Wave

The first phase of warehouse robotics may be coming to close. That’s because vendors today are talking more about fulfillment processes, integration and software, rather than the robots.

The types of robotics systems available has matured and diversified. Autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) can assist warehouse associates with picking efficiency. There’s also AMRs that move larger loads, autonomous lift trucks, mobile goods-to-person systems, and mobile manipulation robots. In the last couple of years, rapid progress has been made with robotic pick-and-place solutions that use artificial intelligence (AI) and articulating robotic arms.

This proliferation of warehouse robotics has come pretty fast and already has brought operational benefits for DCs, but what comes next? While new robots are sure to come, one big change is that more vendors are talking about software capabilities and the imperatives that go with that, like integration and reliable yet flexible process performance.

“We are a fulfillment solution provider, not a robotics vendor,” says Fergal Glynn, vice president of marketing for 6 River Systems, an AMR vendor whose bots work collaboratively with warehouse associates. “The reason being that the robot is a means to an end. What’s important to our customers is the performance of the fulfillment process enabled by the robots.”

Companies with fulfillment centers, meanwhile, aren’t just deploying one type of robot. Some are starting to deploy robotics from different vendors. That elevates the importance of being able to more easily integrate solutions, says Dwight Klappich, research vice president with analyst company Gartner.

Using application programming interfaces (APIs) from robotics vendors and from warehouse management system (WMS) providers helps with integration, but things get more complicated when multiple types of robotics, fixed automation and other systems, like manifesting or cubing and weighing, need to work in concert.

As Klappich explains, APIs help, but “the problem is when operations get to the point of deploying heterogeneous fleets of robots, then that API approach becomes increasingly difficult to do. You can end up with all these one-off integrations between multiple systems and a WMS, knowing that every time I want to introduce a new WMS or have a major upgrade, there is this integration effort again. And, it’s not just the integration work itself, it’s also about wanting the ability to orchestrate work between robots of different types and with other types of automation.”

The integration front

The trend toward robotics from multiple providers has given rise to a new software niche that Klappich and Gartner calls “Multirobot Orchestration.” These platforms sit between and integrate with business applications and heterogeneous fleets of robots, and other forms of automation.

It is an emerging category, Klappich says, with vendors from different backgrounds involved, from providers who specialize in integration, to vendors with a WMS or warehouse execution system (WES) background, to robotics vendors who position their software as capable of orchestration. The category also involves universal fleet managers, with one player in this area being Amazon, which has an Amazon Web Services (AWS) offering called RoboMaker.

The end goal of orchestration, explains Klappich, would be to more easily establish unified workflows using different robotics solutions, so that, for instance, a larger format AMR or autonomous lift truck can bring pallets to replenish a pick area supported by another type of robotics. There generally is less need for such a solution if your company is just getting started with robotics, advises Klappich.

“The need depends on the complexity of the environment,” says Klappich. “If you are an operation just getting started with robotics and want to integrate one AMR solution with one WMS, you probably aren’t going to go out and get a multirobot orchestration platform. The need is driven more so by those companies with increasingly heterogeneous fleets.”

One vendor that specializes in robotics integration is SVT Robotics. The company offers a software platform that simplifies the connections between different systems and how they work together on common processes.

SVT Robotics’ integration platform separates data interface details from the information flows needed for orchestration.

The company’s SOFTBOT platform contains connectors between different robotic systems and enterprise systems like a WMS, and also to other forms of automation such as high-density storage and picking systems, or conveyor systems. The platform offers both SOFTBOT connectors, as well as a drag-and-drop studio function for visually designing integrated process flows. Once designed, which can be done in minutes, the connectors automatically integrate the systems around the designed process without programming.

Additionally, explains A.K. Schultz, CEO and co-founder of SVT Robotics, the platform offers small apps called SOFTBOT Features to orchestrate how different systems can work in unison. But rather than being a full-blown WES, features are “microservices” that do one specific thing, like parse incoming orders to determine factors like which system has needed inventory, whether the system is available, and how busy that system is. Using these small apps, Schultz explains, the platform can coordinate systems.

“There is integration and there is orchestration, but what our customers ultimately want is the orchestration,” Schultz says. “They want multiple different systems to be able to work together in concert, to create a new outcome that one system can’t really achieve on its own. But in order to do that, the first step is integration.”

Companies that have used SVT’s platform include MacGregor Partners, a consulting firm that used it to rapidly deploy mobile robots to automate the transport of supplies at a manufacturing site of one its pharmaceutical industry clients. The facility needed to maintain a sterile environment, so AMRs were chosen as an ideal transport method. SVT’s platform sped up the integration, and the project also included creation of screens for employees to use to communicate with the AMRs.

By using an integration platform, says Schultz, companies can cut the time and effort that would otherwise be spent on API-based integration. Additionally, the SVT platform becomes one common point of integration between different robotics or other automation systems and WMS (or an enterprise resource planning system), rather than dealing with point-to-point integrations to WMS.

The connectors and the SVT platform, Schultz explains, are able to “abstract” data integration details into logical information flows that systems use, such as location for the next task, what goods need to be transported, or where to drop off goods.

Essentially, says Schultz, this separates data exchange details from information flows, while letting the different robotics solutions do what they do best, like fleet management or pick path optimization. “By creating that abstraction, everybody is free to innovate on the part that they’re focused on, without having to deal with all of this complex, direct coupling of technologies,” says Schultz.

Other vendors are addressing the integration opportunity. Blue Yonder, a supply chain software vendor whose offerings include WMS, has come out with a solution called Robotics Hub aimed at simplifying the integration of multiple types of robotics and automation with WMS.

According to Adam Shawish, Blue Yonder’s product management director for Robotics Hub, the hub is a software-as-a service (SaaS) solution intended to streamline integration of multiple robotics and automation with WMS, and not just Blue Yonder’s WMS, but any upstream system that manages warehouse inventory and orders.

“Automation solutions tend to have slightly different ways of communicating [with WMS] so we wanted to standardize those flows with Robotics Hub to reduce the time and effort it takes to roll out and integrate different automation vendors across a warehouse,” Shawish says. “It started out with a focus on [integrating] robotics, but it has since expanded into the onboarding of other types of automation, like goods-to-person systems.”

Glynn points out that 6 River Systems has worked with integration platforms, and also has used API-based integration with deployments. Overall, he agrees, operations managers are after higher-level software which can help orchestrate processes. “We will work with partners to integrate disparate technologies together, but we believe that operators are looking for a single unified user experience and control center for their operations,” he says. “We’re already doing this today at some of our customer facilities.”

Orchestrating multiple systems

Robotics vendor GreyOrange also sees its software as supportive of orchestration. Akash Gupta, GreyOrange co-founder and CTO, says multi-agent orchestration is a “core capability” of the vendor’s GreyMatter software. He says the “agents” the software can coordinate spans not only its bots, but also other robots, as well as people and any other automation elements important to an operation, such as automated packaging.

“Agents can work collaboratively or alone, depending on the work process and the task,” says Gupta. “For example, a person might work with a goods-to-person robot, a robotic picking arm and a mobile conveying robot to pick and pack an order and move it to shipping, or an unmanned intralogistics robot might work independently to move pallets from a dock door to a stock staging area. We believe most companies will prefer to have a mix of agents handling fulfillment, whether in one facility or across their nodes.”

For inVia Robotics, its software is sometimes deployed before the robots, to achieve some productivity efficiencies with human-centered processes, to be followed by further gains once the robots are deployed, says Lior Elazary, inVia’s founder and CEO.

Performance benchmark testing on sample SKUs and bin presentations is advocated by some vendors of AI-based robotic picking solutions to provide insight into real-world system capabilities.

“More operations are needing this conductor capability to assign work, and decide what agent should do what, and when. Our software can perform this conductor role, and it can be for many types of agents, including people, robots, conveyor systems, other machines or something like an auto bagger,” Elazary adds.

While effective integration methods are part of what vendors should offer, it’s also still true that some operations are after a stand-alone system, points out Jeff Christensen, vice president of product at Seegrid.

“The ultimate goal is to optimize and improve material flow overall, and integrations between various systems will be a part of this effort,” Christensen says.

“Integrations support this effort, but they are not necessarily required to improve mobile automation today.”

Seegrid has customers using integrations to dispatch its Seegrid Palion AMRs from an inventory system like a WMS and some doing it through a pull system or with manual dispatching.

“We also have customers creating integrations with other automation and other vendor’s robots,” Christensen adds. “For example, our Palion Tow Tractors are picking and placing at conveyors. Our AMRs can pull alongside the conveyor and transfer an item back and forth between the conveyor and the tow tractor. We also have AMRs currently integrating with roll-up doors in facilities so our robot can open the door as it enters a new space and then closes it after it passes through.”

Solution reliability

When it comes to pick-and-place robotics, solution providers say system effectiveness comes as much from the AI-based software as it does from the arm. Addressing integration is wrapped up in how these vendors approach partnering and solution effectiveness.

API-based integration is how Berkshire Grey, a robotics solutions provider, typically integrates with WMS or other systems that govern inventory and orders, according to Kishore Boyalakuntla, vice president of products for the company, which recently released a robotic putwall solution.

He explains that as a solution provider, Berkshire Grey ensures the integration works, not just from the WMS on down to the robotics, but in the other direction, too. This bi-directional flow lets a WMS or other system know if a SKU or label was damaged or any item was unable to be processed by the robot.

Integration is part of partnering, Boyalakuntla explains, even if the biggest part is AI capabilities that can deal with variation. “We make sure that when we turn on the lights and commission [a system] the pick rates and the throughput is exactly what we agreed upon with the customer, or exceeds it,” he says.

Warehouse robotics applications that automate pick-and-place tasks are very software-driven, using AI and machine learning (ML) smarts to enable the solution to adjust to variations in SKUs or packaging. That means the efficacy of a pick-and-place robotics solution, when deployed in the real world, rests heavily on robotics software expertise.

To support this, Honeywell Intelligrated, with its Honeywell Robotics organization, has invested in software-related “building blocks” for robotics, says Thomas Evans, chief technology officer of Honeywell Robotics.

For example, Honeywell’s Smart, Flexible Depalletizer solution, launched in September, features a robotic arm and AMRs to transport pallets as part of the solution, but the robotics control software is from Honeywell, along with its AI and ML capabilities, and its vision and perception software.

Honeywell extensively tested the solution in pilots with customers to ensure that when launched, the solution can perceive and adjust to variations. Honeywell does partner for the robotic arm, and for some solutions partners with other robotics vendors, but for the new depalletizer, the robotics software and expertise are from Honeywell.