Having trouble finding workers for dull, dangerous, or dirty tasks? For more and more DCs, the answer is a robot. Collecting boxes off a conveyor belt and stacking them neatly on a pallet can be boring, backbreaking work. So when robotic palletizers began to show up in warehouses some 15 years ago, their arrival was hailed as a way to free up human workers to handle more complex tasks around the DC. Fast forward to 2015. The world of warehousing and distribution robotics is now on the verge of another big change, driven by advances in three of the enabling technologies that are necessary for a successful industrial robot deployment. In recent years, engineers have improved robotic intelligence, providing sensors and data to drive more complex applications; robotic mobility, allowing robots to move to the appropriate location in a large warehouse; and robotic vision, using three-dimensional perception to locate specific objects in a cluttered environment. Designers are taking advantage of these new tools to bring robots to parts of the logistics operation where they haven’t been seen before. Counting manufacturing as well as distribution, an estimated 236,000 robots are now in use at American factories, placing the U.S. second only to Japan in robot use. And that number is growing fast, according to the Robotic Industries Association (RIA). A total of 22,427 robots valued at $1.3 billion were ordered from North American companies in the first nine months of 2015, a jump of 6 percent in units and 9 percent in dollars over the same period last year. OFFLOADING THE "4D" JOBS There’s a platitude among engineers that the best applications for robots in the workplace are the "4D" jobs; tasks that are too dangerous, dull, dirty, or dumb for human laborers to perform efficiently. That applies in the […]