For years, warehouses have sought to reduce their biggest inefficiencies, namely horizontal travel, picking and packing bottlenecks and difficulty adjusting to demand shifts.

Pickers in large warehouses, human or robotic, often spend more time getting around the warehouse than picking. As pick demand changes, perhaps due to expansion or a new mix of products, those travel times could become longer or more complicated. Routes change or become congested, or picking systems can’t keep up with fast-moving items.

Delays also occur downstream if outbound package flow is interrupted due to late trucks, weather or other problems. Delays also occur when humans need to enter the robotic work zones to recover lost or stuck autonomous mobile robots (AMRs).

One engineering approach has been to develop autonomous warehouse systems that remove people from storage aisles altogether. Several vendors, including AutoStore, Ocado and Exotec, offer solutions here.

Exotec offers the Skypod system, which uses AMRs that travel vertically between storage racks. This positions storage racks closer together, which means more storage per square foot. And the increased modularity can help solve some of the long-standing bottlenecks.

Renaud Heitz, CTO, Exotec

“Software is the brain of modern warehouse robotics,” Renaud Heitz, CTO of Exotec, told GlobalSpec in a recent exchange. Heitz co-founded Exotec in 2015, after roles as a robotics engineer at BA Systeme and a software architect for General Electric Healthcare.

Despite the novel hardware, Heitz figures future efficiencies are more likely to come from software.

GS: What type of logic or intelligence do the robots have?

Our intelligence is split across two layers: our warehouse execution software (WES) runs on servers and orchestrates all missions to fulfill customer logistics needs, while our robotics software runs directly on the robot's control board, enabling accurate localization and advanced motion control to execute those missions.

GS: Can you walk through the order fulfillment process? How are the robots navigating and behaving to retrieve payloads?

When an order is placed, the warehouse management system (WMS) verifies inventory availability and instantly communicates with our WES, Deepsky. [It] then determines the optimal execution sequence, resolves logistical constraints and applies the customer's business rules to select the right containers for fulfillment.

A physical movement order is then sent to Astar, our fleet manager, which assigns the right robot, via the right path, and dispatches the mission to the robot control software.

Retrieved items are automatically transported to a picking station, grouped by order. Depending on the setup, this step may be handled by a human operator or an automated picking arm.

Completed orders are stored back in the rack. The WMS can then decide when and in what sequence to release them…this buffering and sequencing capability is unique: it decouples picking from shipping.

Once packed and sequenced, orders are sent to the outbound dock or last-mile courier zone. In many cases, this happens within less than 30 minutes of the order being placed.

GS: How safe is it for humans to interact with the Skypod system?

The Skypod system operates within a closed environment, meaning when the robots are in operation, areas designated for storing goods are off-limits to operators. The Skypod robots use low-voltage batteries (48 V) to ensure that the risk of human electrocution is eliminated. At picking stations, the speed of the robots is limited and mechanical barriers are in place to prevent collisions.

Finally, warehouse operators don’t need to worry about fixing the robots following a malfunction. During maintenance or in the event of breakdowns, robots are halted by Exotec technicians, who are the sole individuals authorized to access the picking robots.

Our design methodologies focus on optimizing working conditions and are compliant with safety regulations across the U.S., EU, Japan and South Korea.

GS: Do the robots get lost? How do they reorient and localize?

Skypod robots navigate through the system in three dimensions: driving on the ground and climbing on the racks, using an embedded vision system beneath the racks, fully orchestrated by Deepsky.

Like any physical robotic system, they can sometimes lose their trajectory or get physically stuck. This is why we have three control centers based in Lille, Tokyo and Atlanta, which offer 24/7 support. Our monitoring system can auto-detect the need for support, enabling more than 90% of interventions to be managed without any customer call.

GS: How does this address the scalability challenges warehouse operators face? How difficult is it to change aisle layouts?

Our Skypod system allows fleets of robots to scale up to 14 m in height, maximizing storage density and increasing throughput.

Unlike pick-and-place solutions locked into a single channel, the Skypod handles both "each" picking for e-commerce and "case" picking for store replenishment within the same platform, and capacity can be reallocated between channels as demand evolves.

As for layout changes, the modular design of our hardware and software makes reconfiguration straightforward and non-disruptive. Adding robots to the fleet takes minutes. Expanding storage by installing additional racks takes only a matter of weeks, all without interrupting ongoing operations.

GS: What’s next on the automated warehouse R&D roadmap for Exotec?

Looking ahead, our roadmap focuses on three directions. First, embedding more AI directly into robot control, making our robots increasingly robust to any unexpected situation encountered on the ground.

Second, unlocking more value from the vast volume of operational data our systems generate, turning it into actionable insights for our customers.

Third, enriching our WES with advanced software features to adapt even more precisely to each customer's specific business rules and logistics needs.

 As technology continues to evolve, the real breakthrough will come from integration by connecting robotics not just within the warehouse, but across the entire supply chain.