The warehouse will see great growth in heterogeneous robot fleets over the next decade, says Dwight Klappich, a vice president and fellow at Gartner. The good news is that medium-sized companies can afford the technology.

Gartner research indicates that 96% of 500 supply chain leaders of companies of different sizes and across industries are using robotics or are planning to do so. The labor shortage appeared to be the primary motivation for moving to robotics, but Klappich says many companies are finding that “they can’t pay their way out of labor challenges.” They still need some kind of human labor force. Nevertheless, Gartner expects to see exponential growth in the technology over the next year.

In fact, 90% of companies that have experimented with one robot said they plan to increase their fleet. That’s where heterogeneous fleets come in, Klappich says. As there are many tasks to be performed in a warehouse, many different kinds of robots may be needed. “Take truck unloading I might have one kind of robot that unloads palletized goods, and a different kind of robot that unloads case goods.”

Employing robots from different vendors creates a challenge, Klappich says. “How do I orchestrate the work between all of those robots and companies?” The solution is what he calls a multi-agent orchestration platform that assigns work and coordinates activities.

While many companies ae interested in robotics technology, is the investment required prohibitive in size? “Absolutely not,” says Klappich. “The study we did was cross-industry, cross-geography and across size of company. I can pick up a robot for a thousand dollars a month. That means companies of any size can be doing that. And we're talking to customers of all sizes right now about robotics, because smaller companies can invest in the technology.”