More robots and fewer people. That’s the future of warehousing.As consumer expectations for speed of delivery, customisation and product availability increase, warehouses will be under pressure to keep up.Anthea van Breemen of Forte Warehousing Solutions says more artificial intelligence (AI) can be expected in the warehousing space in the future. “Robots will make people’s jobs more efficient and ergonomic,” she explains. “For example, why not bring the distribution unit to the picker in the location instead of sending the picker there? I recently visited a warehouse where AI is being tested in the f lower industry. Face recognition software is being used on f lower bulbs for sorting and counting. This replaces manual sorting and machines count the number of bulbs falling through a funnel.”The increasingly important role of AI is already evident in the larger logistics operators’ warehouse environments where autonomous vehicles and robots have been delivering solutions.Amazon has in the region of 350 000 mobile drive robots deployed across their fulfilment operations worldwide. The company has, to date, not calculated the total population of robots in operation, but has said it is growing rapidly and will continue to do so.The International Federation of Robotics estimates an annual growth of 12-15% of robot use in warehouses and distribution centres from 2020-2022. According to a recent report by Transport Intelligence (TI), different types of robots are being used in the logistics sector. These include:Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMR) – robots that move materials around the warehouse environment;Automated Guided Vehicles (AGV) – another type of material transport robot, but restricted to certain routes using wires, magnetic strips or sensors; and Collaborative robots or cobots – designed specifically to help human workers where repetition is involved such as wrapping, sealing or boxing.“As robots become cheaper, humans will become more expensive in comparison, therefore it makes sense to ensure that the people in any operation are skilled to exploit the increased f lexibility of an automated fulfilment operation. As logistics is transformed by trends towards e-commerce, e-retail and new manufacturing models, the f lexibility enabled by robots as a service (RaaS) will be game changing,” reads the report.One of the challenges in this fast-changing AI environment, however, is security. “Despite the explosive growth in devices capable of being connected to Internet of Things (IoT) networks, there are very few security standards that have been agreed. This is because different manufacturers have developed their own technology platforms and some of these have their origins back when cyber risk was uncommon,” according to the report. “Given the necessity for sensors and other devices in any IoT ecosystem to communicate, open interfaces and ease of connectivity provide an open door for malicious actors. This has now been recognised as a significant risk to operational performance, but the variety and volume of new devices make it very difficult and expensive to retroactively address.”On the upside, the increasing use of cloud-based applications and services continues to make it easier to consistently enforce good cyber-security practice.Another challenge is resilience and business continuity, according to TI. “As warehousing facilities are increasingly automated, they are reconfigured around the most efficient layouts for operations. The deployment of robots, narrow aisle bays, automated vehicle pathways etc, change the nature of such locations into areas where humans are confined to small sections. This becomes a serious issue in the event of prolonged power failure or system outage. In more traditional layouts, humans can continue to move around the entire facility and have the room to maintain operations at a slower speed. But within facilities where movement and access is restricted to the dimensions of machines, it is impossible to run a manual operation.”
