Agreed. Both the host and the style of the video are great. Most marketing from their competitors is so vague, I don't know why they bother. These are million dollar systems, people want details.

I imagine the robots have IMUs or SLAM onboard as well, but also need to see QR codes occasionally to recalibrate and avoid cumulative errors.

In reality most of these system have an ROI in less that 24 months. You not only get increased density, expedited and streamlined order fulfillment. The systems are easily scalable, and can perform many functions as the system prepares for the next shift. Many of the challenges you find in distributions systems, simply do not exist once automated!!!

@@JamesClarkDCautomation "ROI in less that 24 months" In my experience this is almost never true. The ROI assumptions used are always nonsensical. I've seen plenty of shuttle systems with lower system lines/hr than can be achieved with manual batch picking.

@@dang3304 I have been in the Industry for over 15 years. I have engineered and sold many types of order picking and order fulfillment strategies. You are correct, there are solutions that allow you to pick more lines per hour, and if you have the Real Estate and a Solid labor force, you can easily hit whatever rates you are targeting, using voice, lights, and RF. Now if you are trying to use all your cube, then on top of these picking strategies, you are also paying for various types of MHE ( Material Handling Equipment) Order Pickers, Turret trucks, Fork trucks, walkie riders.. etc. In some areas you may be using a VNA approach for density, but most of the time we see aisles that are between 12 and 14 ft wide. When you use AMRs ( Autonomous Mobile Robots), you can shrink aisles down to just over a meter. You eliminate much of the MHE, to include the service contracts that go along with those items. You both reduce and stabilize your workforce. Order accuracy increases, shrinkage decreases to zero. We see ROI in under a year with some applications, but under 2 years is common. Of course it is all dependent on the solution, the challenges, and your workforce situation and the size of the system. GeekPlus has some great solutions, and we see the industry is turning to the Rack to person, Goods to Person, and Totes to Person methods, but the Engineering firm I represent, offers everything from your standard and manual picking methods, to the more complex AMR solutions. No system will work for everyone!!! Many Blessings! James

this looks more like an Amazon, what's the point of storing the packages that need to go, am I missing something here ? 🤔

@@MrGene1976 Well, although that's not what this is in any way; I wish UPS would do their own version of Amazon. They have every bit of the needed infrastructure. Basically, this can be faster than the way UPS does things. Normally, a trailer comes onto the property and they are unloaded as needed. IE decides all of this, then they are put on other trailers, also determined by IE. I don't think this as illustrated is living in reality, because all packages aren't alike, they aren't all packed alike, etc. But given the clean floor area, compared with the reality of every single UPS hub and center I've been in, this could be much more efficient.

@@MrGene1976 One day in the not too distant future, UPS is going to tell them Teamsters to kick sand. The first step will be only highly trained maintenance employees in all the hubs, working on robots and the apparatus' that moves all these packages; they'll even actually load and unload trailers. Outside of the hubs, they'll still have human delivery drivers and tractor trailer drivers, but little by little if or as people accept friendly robots into their daily lives, they'll eventually take over those roles. And the last step, possibly, maybe sooner, are no humans anywhere except retired employees like me who collect a pension. AI will do all the computer work, all the scheduling, everything.

@@turn-n-burn1421 yeah, I've seen some self-driving yard trucks out there already at some other companies, I think Teamsters contract prohibits them for now, but who knows in the future. I need like 15 more years before I can retire, but still it's all going that way that you've described, so for the next generations future may be pretty dark...