Gary Forger

3 weeks ago | mmh.com | Gary Forger

Oh, boy. Here we go again. In 2013, Jeff Bezos went on “60 Minutes” to talk about Amazon’s future use of drones to deliver orders to people’s homes. He put a five-year timeline on it. Within just a few months people started talking about having drones deliver packages to their porches. Only trouble was, it never happened, unless in an isolated pilot—and still doesn’t happen a dozen years later. Brace yourself: A new distortion cycle is here. This time it’s with humanoid robots.

3 weeks ago | logisticsmgmt.com | Gary Forger

Right now, artificial intelligence (AI) is probably the most misunderstood top-of-mind technology anywhere in the world. And by all indications, that is not going to change anytime soon. Many think AI is a black box of universal truth. However, as recent as four years ago, it was probably not as sophisticated as a 3-year-old. That has changed rapidly, and the technology in general is now about as mature as a typical teenager. Maybe a 20-year-old.

2 months ago | mmh.com | Gary Forger

Rewind to early February 2025. Come on in. Sit next to me. We’re at a Modern editorial planning meeting and the next topic is the story about robots for the April issue. “I think we should do something on special-purpose robots.”“You mean something other than an AMR or robotic AS/RS?”“Yeah.”“Can you be more specific?” “Kind of.” And with that, the hunt for special-purpose robots was off and running.

Jan 8, 2025 | mmh.com | Gary Forger

Time to suit up. We’re goin’ pickin’. But we’ve got some choices to make before we get out on the floor. Several, actually. On the ergonomic side are exoskeletal suits. This emerging option helps with the heavy lifting. And the suit is fitted to you individually. Your warehouse tailor, so to speak. Then you have a broad range of technologies and form factors for wearable devices that collect and manage data and routes. As a class, they make order fulfillment easier, faster and highly accurate.

Dec 2, 2024 | mmh.com | Gary Forger

The other day, someone asked what’s going on with voice. And vision. In order picking. Wait a minute. Did I miss something along the way? Voice and vision together here? It was time for some calls. Turns out that not only are voice and vision teaming up with bar code scanners to pick items, confirm accuracy and fill orders, but there’s more. Autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) are emerging as a potential component of this new order picking technology cocktail.