According to a 2024 report from MHI (the U.S.-based material handling, logistics and supply chain association), 29% of manufacturers are using some kind of robotics and automation, with another 54% planning to adopt it in the next five years. And with autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) currently representing about 40% of all mobile robot sales and AMRs considered a top three priority for business to embrace, Matt Rendall, CEO and co-founder of Otto Motors (a Rockwell Automation company that makes AMRs and related software), said this notable increase in usage is poised to make the next five years a “golden age of AMR adoption” across industry.
To support his position on this, Rendall shared three application examples highlighting the current impact of AMRs during a presentation at Automation Fair 2024 with Ryan Gariepy, Otto CTO and co-founder:
- GE Healthcare’s Repair Operation Center services critical, complex medical devices to get them back into use as fast as possible. Rendall noted the criticality of this equipment means that service technicians should not be spending too much time chasing the right part needed to repair a device. “We were able to rejig how repair operations happen inside the GE Healthcare organization using Otto AMRs,” he said. “As a result, they were able to consolidate four regional repair operations centers into a single national repair operations center, saving them 65% of the square footage [dedicated to repairs] in their operations. And we were able to reduce work cell size by about 40%—an important savings in today's manufacturing environment where real estate is a premium.”
- At Forvia (a France-based automotive supplier), Otto AMRs paid for themselves in 11 months with zero safety incidents, noted Rendall. Beyond the fast ROI, the zero safety incidents number is “really important,” he added. “You can't go into a manufacturing plant and not see a board on the wall that says safety is number one. So being able to improve the safety environment [with AMRs] is very important for all our customers.”
- For Mauser Packaging Solutions, Otto overhauled the company end-of-line operations using AMRs to deliver a six-fold increase in throughput. “That's a remarkable productivity gain that shows what can happen when an AMR is implemented in the right place at the right time inside a manufacturing operation,” said Rendall. “Mauser was able to take the three people who formerly worked that end-of-line operation and reallocate them to other areas in the plant which were more suited for humans. So, it was a win-win for everybody.”
Looking forward, Rendall recognized that “integration complexity is the biggest issue holding manufacturers back from building their factories of the future. But Rockwell Automation has the opportunity to better integrate the pieces of this puzzle so that integration risk and complexity are collapsed for the customer to provide for faster time to value. As a part of Rockwell Automation (which acquired AMR suppliers Otto and Clearpath Robotics in late 2023/early 2024), we can do this faster than by integrating technologies from unrelated brands.”
AMR advances reduce complexity, boost safety
Explaining how improvements in technologies such as dynamic planning and control, perception and sensing, intelligence and collaboration, have changed the game for AMRs, Gariepy said, “The last decade in particular has been very exciting in perception technology because it's critical that our robots know where they are in a facility at any given time and what's around them.”
He noted that the lack of this ability used to be a substantial limiting factor in determining where AMRs could be deployed. “For example, early AMRs needed to have very carefully crafted and controlled environments,” he said. “Now, state-of-the-art AMR technology is legitimately approaching human capabilities, and that's allowing us to operate in increasingly complex and challenging environments. It also serves as a source of valuable data for improving the robots, as well as a factory’s operations in general.”
Gariepy added that, “because our robots know how they move and know what they're capable of doing, users can spend more time making sure those robots are integrated with the rest of their operations to bring business value and far less time on configuration details and tweaks.”
This awareness is key to increasing worker safety as AMRs start to move faster with the use of AI and industry places more of these robots into service. “When there are only one or two robots, everyone treats them as special devices and they're very careful around them,” said Gariepy. “But when you have a factory with hundreds or thousands of robots, your requirements for safety go up substantially.”
A primary goal for Rockwell Automation is that manufacturers view AMRs as a force multiplier. Gariepy said this means AMRs need to be relatable and easily configured for new tasks. AMRs need to be viewed as “co-workers,” he said, “as we start to explore the future potential of these robots.”
