The main types
| Type | How it works | Disruption to the building |
|---|---|---|
| Collaborative picking AMRs | Robots travel the aisles with pickers, who place items into totes on the robot | Low; works in existing racking |
| Goods-to-person AMRs | Robots bring shelves or totes to a fixed pick station | Medium; needs a dedicated robot zone |
| Autonomous tuggers and carts | Move carts, pallets or totes between fixed points | Low to medium |
| AGVs and automated forklifts | Follow set paths or navigate to move pallets | Medium; traffic rules and floor quality matter |
| Automated storage and retrieval (AS/RS) | Dense storage grids or shuttles that deliver bins to a port | High; a building project |
| Palletizing and case-picking arms | Stack or unstack cases at the end of a line | Medium; often a cobot cell |
AMR or AGV. An autonomous mobile robot (AMR) builds a map and plans its own path around obstacles. An automated guided vehicle (AGV) traditionally follows fixed routes marked by tape, magnets or reflectors. The line has blurred, but the practical difference remains: AMRs are faster to deploy and change, while AGVs tend to carry heavier loads on predictable routes.
Matching the robot to the operation
- Growing e-commerce or parts operation, existing shelving: collaborative picking AMRs. They can often start with a handful of robots and scale for peak season.
- High order volume, many small items, limited space: goods-to-person systems or AS/RS. They raise pick rates and storage density, at the cost of a bigger project and less flexibility.
- Repetitive transport between fixed points (receiving to storage, line to shipping): autonomous tuggers, carts or AGVs.
- End-of-line pallet building: a palletizing cell. See collaborative robots.
Collect your data before talking to vendors: order lines per day and at peak, units per line, SKU count, how orders are released, and your current pick rate in lines per labor hour. Vendors will model the gain from it, and you will have a baseline to hold them to.
Integration is the real project
The robots are useless without instructions from your warehouse management system (WMS). Ask whether the vendor has a working integration with your WMS, whether it is a standard connector or custom work, and who pays for changes. Small operations running inventory in an ERP or a spreadsheet may need to upgrade systems first.
Robots also need reliable Wi-Fi across the whole floor, a clean and level floor (cracks, ramps and dock plates can stop them), charging locations, and clear traffic rules where they share aisles with forklifts and people. Your IT team should also check the network and security arrangements; see network switches if the floor needs more access points.
Safety standards for mobile robots
In the US, industrial mobile robots are covered by ANSI/A3 R15.08, and driverless industrial trucks and AGVs by ANSI/ITSDF B56.5. Automated forklifts internationally follow ISO 3691-4. Robot arms on the line fall under ISO 10218 as adopted in ANSI/A3 R15.06. OSHA's powered industrial truck rules cover forklifts driven by people; where automated and manual trucks share space, the interaction needs to be in your risk assessment. See robot safety.
Costs people miss
- WMS integration and ongoing software fees.
- Wi-Fi upgrades and floor repairs.
- Chargers, spare batteries and the space they take.
- Totes, carts and shelving changes to suit the robots.
- Project management, training and the productivity dip during go-live.
- Peak-season robots: check the price and notice period to add them.
Many AMR vendors sell by subscription. The contract terms to check are in robots as a service. Browse models in the service robot directory.
Before you buy
- Collect order profile data: lines per day and at peak, units per line, SKU count, current pick rate.
- Decide how much building change you can accept.
- Confirm a proven integration with your WMS, and who pays for changes.
- Survey Wi-Fi and floor condition across the robot routes.
- Ask which safety standard the robots meet, and plan the mixed traffic zones.
- Get a modeled productivity gain, and put it in the contract as an acceptance test.
- Check peak-season scaling terms and the exit terms.