AMRs may not be new technology anymore, but they can still become more capable, say experts. Source: Adobe Stock
Not long ago, autonomous mobile robots, or AMRs, were considered cutting-edge, untested technology. Now, they’re among the fastest-growing types of robots.
In 2023, the mobile robot market grew by 27% to reach $4.5 billion globally, according to Interact Analysis. The research firm predicted that the market would reach $5.5 billion in 2024 and that it could grow at more than 20% annually up to 2030.
Andrew Singletary, the co-founder and CEO of 3Laws Robotics, and Jake Heldenberg, the director of sales engineering in warehousing for North America at Vanderlande, shared their insights on the latest trends in the AMR market.
Customer perception of AMRs is changing
As with any new technology, end users tend to be wary of AMRs because of concerns that the technology isn’t proven. Cost is also a top concern for most customers, noted Heldenberg. Many vendors manufacture their robots in Asian markets, and recent tariff talks have created uncertainty around costs.
“The other fear is, ultimately, if something doesn’t seem proven to a customer, uptime,” Heldenberg said. Customers want to know what to do when a robot fails, how a failure will affect their operations, and how much redundancy there is in the system.
“Seeing is believing, and so the best way that we actually get rid of those fears is we take customers to an existing site with AMRs in them working,” he said. “When they see them working, and they talk to operators or the ops managers or the end users of that equipment, that’s when we see a lot of that concern start to dissipate.”
Additionally, as warehouse operators turn to robotics to automate more tasks, they increasingly need robots that can communicate with other robots of different brands.
“Most people want to have a multi-vendor solution when they’re looking at outfitting their factories. So, having robots actually be able to work together is really important,” Singletary said. “Often, you see factories not really hitting that challenge yet, because they’re just bringing in one robot for one application just to test it out. They haven’t run into the issue of, ‘Now we’re automating a bunch of different functions inside of our warehouse. How are these robots going to work together and talk to each other?’”
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How will AI shake up the AMR industry?
The explosion of advancements in generative AI and large language models (LLMs) in recent years has left everyone wondering: How do we apply this to robots? AMRs are no exception. Heldenberg predicted that LLMs could transform how robots are trained.
“It’s not about the AI itself; it’s about how the system learns and when it learns,” he said. “Does it take that learning and stabilize it, meaning it makes it part of its method of operation moving forward, or does it learn always something new on the fly?”
Similarly, Singletary said AI could help make deployments faster and easier. “Right now, you need a lot of setup, a lot of trained operators to make sure these robots are functioning properly,” he said. “You have to give them a lot of direction and keep them in pretty constrained environments. As the intelligence of these systems grows, you can give them more open-ended tasks in less constrained environments.”
AI can also greatly improve AMR perception systems.
“For perception, things like vision and language models give robots the ability to distinguish between objects,” Singletary said. “Not just having points in a laser scan, but having an understanding of this is a person. That person might move around. This is a wall; the wall is not going to move, so I can move very quickly next to it. I think that offers huge productivity increases.”
Other technologies emerge around mobile robots
Humanoid and legged robots have commanded a lot of attention and funding in the industry in recent years, but that doesn’t mean wheeled robots are becoming obsolete. Many see mobile manipulators as a cheaper and more reliable alternative.
“We’re seeing a lot of interest in mobile manipulators, putting robot arms on top of these AMRs,” Singletary said. “The number of tasks a robot can do just explodes when you suddenly can pick up and interact with the world in a way that you couldn’t before. And that requires a level of intelligence that we’ve really only figured out with large foundation models.”
When it came to emerging technologies, Heldenberg highlighted automated case-handling robots (ACRs). These systems typically feature very tall robots that maximize vertical reach while maintaining a small footprint.
In particular, Heldenberg said ACRs could be useful in the beverage market, where they can feed cases directly to a takeaway conveyor or a palletizing cell.
Outlook for AMRs is bright, but with challenges
While the outlook for AMRs remains bright, there will still be challenges moving forward.
“The biggest barrier, and this is something that you’re not going to overcome, is throughput versus footprint,” observed Heldenberg. “The higher your throughput, the more lanes or the more bots you have on the ground, the more traffic you have, and that becomes a major issue.”
“We have found in our own simulations, in our own studies, and working with partners and customers, you hit a certain throughput where still a sorter makes sense, just a crossbelt sorter, because you can run it at a very high speed,” he continued. “It’s very consistent. It’s very reliable. The in feeds and the out feeds are always consistent. Whereas in AMRs, if you try and look at it from a swarm perspective, you end up with bottlenecks.”
However, there are plenty of growth markets for AMRs. For instance, e-commerce demand will continue to grow, even as mobile robots have already made headway in that market.
Stepping outside of the warehouse, Singletary highlighted the food delivery and last-mile delivery markets. “I think there’s a lot of possibilities beyond just food delivery, in terms of, quick delivery of goods to customers in a way that’s more efficient than loading them into a big truck,” he said.
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