Collecting boxes off a conveyor belt and stacking them neatly on a pallet can be boring, backbreaking work. So when robotic palletizers began to show up in warehouses some 15 years ago, their arrival was hailed as a way to free up human workers to handle more complex tasks around the DC.
Fast forward to 2015. The world of warehousing and distribution robotics is now on the verge of another big change, driven by advances in three of the enabling technologies that are necessary for a successful industrial robot deployment.