Survey: confidence in intelligent robots for warehouse automation at all-time high

Covariant, a leading artificial intelligence (AI)-based robotics company, surveyed over 300 logistics professionals on their current fulfillment challenges, technology investment priorities, and perception of AI Robotics. Notable findings from the survey reveal a record-level interest in AI Robotics and planned investment across material handling operations such as sortation, induction, good-to-person order picking, and depalletization.

The survey was released ahead of MODEX 2022, the largest international supply chain expo, being held on March 28—31 in Atlanta, GA, the company sought to understand logistics professionals’ plans for implementing AI robotics to automate warehouse picking processes.

“Savvy logistics professionals believe the new generation of intelligent automation, AI Robotics, will solve many of today’s most pervasive fulfillment center challenges,” said Peter Chen, CEO of Covariant. “We’ve reached a critical phase of technological viability. Covariant robots are performing autonomously, and often exceeding traditional operations, while delivering a strong business case. As supply chain challenges continue to put pressure on warehouses, prospects are expressing rising urgency to adopt our solutions.”

Notable findings include:

• Almost half of respondents assert that intelligent robots have become smart enough to reliably run pick-and-place stations.
• Of that group, one in four are already using AI-powered robotics or in the midst of implementation.
• The main barriers to adoption fell into two major areas for the minority who indicated they have yet to try AI Robotics. One is some uncertainty around ROI / lack of awareness of new commercial models such as Robot-as-a-Service (RaaS) — 35% are concerned implementing a solution would be too expensive. Second, Covariant added, it is a noisy marketplace — 16% are overwhelmed by the nuances of available solutions and difficulty in assessing the differences of each one.

Covariant customer Ed Shapiro, Director of Engineering at 3PL Capacity, acknowledged his similar initial sentiment, “When getting started, it can be difficult to understand the impact AI-powered solutions could have on your unique operations, but Covariant proved their expertise every step of the way. Starting with their assessment framework for benchmarking performance, to developing an ROI-centric RaaS commercial model, all the way to ensuring full-scale deployment success, Covariant demonstrated technical expertise, superior performance, and immediate value. We’re keen to help others learn from our process by presenting at MODEX.”

Covariant and Capacity are co-hosting an educational seminar about the deployment and best practices on Tuesday, March 29, 2022. Attendees will leave the session with an inside look at one of the industry’s most cutting-edge deployments of AI Robotics, Covariant added.

In addition to the seminar, Covariant will be demoing their AI-powered robotic systems for warehouse automation at Booth #C4592 along with three other vendors including ABB (Booth #B4004), KNAPP (Booth #B6811 and #B6819), and Bastian (Booth #B5619) that will also be demonstrating their physical robots powered by the Covariant Brain.