AMRS no longer has to be new technology, but may be more capable, experts say. Source: Adobe Stock
Recently, autonomous mobile robots or AMRS have been considered top untested technologies. Now it is one of the rapidly growing types of robots.
In 2023, the mobile robot market increased by 27% to $ 4.5 billion worldwide, according to interact analysis. The research company predicted that the market would reach $ 5.5 billion in 2024 and that it could grow to more than 20% per year up to 2030.
Andrew Singletary, co -founder and CEO of 3laws Robotics, and Jake Heldenberg, director of sales engineering in storage for North America in Vanderlande, shared their knowledge of the latest trends in the AMR market.
The perception of AMRS customer is changing
As with any new technology, end users tend to be careful about AMR because this technology is not proven. The price is also the highest interest for most customers, stressed by Heldenberg. Many sellers produce their robots on Asian markets and recent tariffs have created uncertainty about costs.
“The second fear is ultimately, if it seems that the customer does not seem to be proven, in a operated manner,” Heldenberg said. Customers want to know what to do when a robot fails, how failures will affect their operations and how much redundancy exists in the system.
“Vision believes, and so the best way to get rid of these concerns is that we take our customers to the existing AMR pages working in them,” he said. “When they see how they work and talk to operators or OPS managers or end users of this device, then we see how much concerns are starting to distract.”
In addition, as warehouse operators turn to robotics to automate multiple tasks, they need robots that can communicate with other robots of different brands.
“Most people want to have a solution for more sales that look at the equipment of their factories. So having robots who are really able to work together are really important,” Singletary said. “You often see factories that have not yet gained this challenge because they just bring one robot for one application to try it. They have come across the result:” Now we automate a lot of different features inside our warehouse. How do they work together and together with each other? “”
Now accepting the senses!
How will AI shake the AMR industry?
In recent years, the explosion of progress in generative AI models and large languages (LLMS) has let everyone think: How do we apply it to robots? AMR is no exception. Heldenberg predicted that LLMS could transform how robots were trained.
“It is not about artificial intelligence itself; it is how the system learns and when learning,” he said. “DES it takes learning and stabilization, which means that it is part of its method of operation that moves forward, or does it always learn something new while running?”
Similarly, Singletary said that AI could help quickly and easier to commit. “Right now you need a lot of settings, many trained operators to make sure these robots work correctly,” he said. “You have to give them a lot of direction and keep them in pretty limited mild places. As the intelligence of these systems grows, you can give them more open tasks in less limited around.”
AI can also significantly improvise the AMR perception system.
“For perception, they give things like vision and language models to robots the ability to distinguish between objects,” Singletary said. “Not only has points in laser scanning, but understanding is a person. This person can move. This is a wall; the wall will not move so I can move very quickly next to it.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yac9k3bf9oi
There are other technologies around mobile robots
Humanoid and legged robots have commanded great attention and funding in this industry in recent years, but that does not mean that bike robots are outdated. Many of them see mobile manipulators as a cheaper and more reliable alternative.
“We see great interest in mobile manipulators and put robotic weapons on them,” Singletary said. “The number of tasks that a robot can do is just exploded when you can pick it up and communicate with the world as you could be before. And that requires the level of intelligence that we really just figured with large endowment models.
When the technology was developed, Heldenberg emphasized automated robots for handling the housing (ACR). These systems usually have very high robots that maximize vertical reach while holding a small track.
In particular, Heldenberg said ACRS could be useful in the drink market where they can feed cases directly into the conveyor with them or a palletizing cell.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9WQVS_SS70
The outlook for AMRS is clear, the goal with challenges
While the outlook for AMR remains clear, they will still proceed forward.
“The biggest barrier, and that’s something you won’t overcome, is the permeability of Versus Track,” Heldenberg said. “The higher your permeability, the more stripes or the more robots you have in the group, the more traffic you have, and this becomes the main problem.”
“We have found OWL in our simulations, in our own studies and cooperation with partners and customers, you have encountered a certain course where the sorter still makes sense, only the crossbow, because you can run it at very high speed,” he continued. “It is very resting. It’s very reliable. In feeds and channels they are always consisting. While in AmRS, if you try to look at it from a swarm perspective, you end up with narrow rates.”
For AMR, however, there are plantation growth markets. For example, the demand for electronic trading will continue to grow, although mobile robots have already advanced on this market.
The singletary, which was out of the warehouse, emphasized the markets of food delivery and to the last mile. “I think there are plenty of options than only giving them food when it comes to quick delivery of goods to customers, which is more efficient than loading them into a large truck,” he said.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mc4xqqVwc