Almost a fifth of our survey respondents expect to be using AMRs to some extent by the end of next year, which is a remarkably high figure for a technology that was perceived as futuristic just a few years ago. Autonomous operation, though, has much wider applications than merely ‘intelligent trucks’, whether within the warehouse or out on the road.
At IMHX 2022 we expect to see, less photogenic but more significant, intelligence and autonomy applied at system scale: the operations of entire warehouses or distribution networks acting almost as sentient organisms – self-learning, self-correcting, self-optimising and adapting to change in real time.
Importantly though, there are unlikely to be many situations where autonomous equipment offers a total replacement for the human element. In many cases automation will take the form of ‘cobots’ – intelligent machinery that works alongside human beings.
They won’t just be taking over the harder and more physical elements of the task – transporting, lifting, manipulating – but they will be learning from their human colleagues, and using this learning to devise and recommend better and more productive approaches.