Garrett Place, business development at ifm efector, talks with Manufacturing Matters about making more efficient autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) that deliver a better ROI for customers. One of the biggest challenges companies face when adopting AMRs is the system’s total cost of ownership. But Place describes a “paradigm shift” where end users have to increase cost to decrease cost. To be faster and more efficient, an AMR needs to add perception to attain a greater understanding of its environment — i.e., identifying obstacles so the vehicle plans a new path rather than stops. Adding this technology increases the robot’s cost yet decreases its overall mission time. This reduction in mission time allows the customer to decrease the number of robots required to manage throughput, and fewer robots translates to a significant drop in a company’s capital expenditure.
