Vecna Robotics Powers Scalable Warehouse Automation Through Human-in-the-Loop Support

Alrighty. Nikki, are you ready? I'm ready. Thumbs up? Okay. Good. Welcome to episode six of Robot versus Wild. I'm Josh Kvanko. I'm joined by yet another trusty pal, Nikki Slaughter. Good morning, Nikki. How are you? I'm doing great. How are you? I'm good. I'm good. This is your second appearance on one of our webinars, although it could be our your third. I'm not sure. Definitely the second. Definitely the second. Definitely the second. So Nikki is our director of post post deployment operations, and she is going to be talking about the topic of behind every great robot is a strong human. Behind every great robot is a strong human. Sounds kinda strange, but then in the next half hour, I think it'll all make sense. What do you think, Nikki? Are we gonna do it? Yep. We hope so. So as usual, all these webinars are recorded. They're up on our website. We actually do and Clint does a great job of trimming them down to, like, ninety second, two minute, strips. So if you just wanted to watch the, the previous webinars and and want to condimize your time, they're also the little, snippets are available on our YouTube page if you'd like to, follow us there. Of course, you can also, watch and stream, all of the past episodes of Robot versus Wild and our other series, through our website. So with that, let's get going. So let's tee up, as I usually do but quickly, the robot versus wild concept. Like, where are we coming from here? And this is something that perhaps is slightly outdated. You know? Every this seems like this market changes so rapidly. But I think directionally, this is how we see, automation technology in the warehouse for the most part. We believe that there's technologies that are ready for to today. Right? Immediately for you to deploy horizontal transport, person that goes gets the person picking, huge storage. These are fairly mature technologies that or I would say mature technologies that you can deploy at scale. And that's really what the series is about, is deploying this kind of technology at scale. There are other technologies that are, are kinda ready, or ready to be ready in the near term, case picking. And you've heard us talk a little bit about case picking in the past. I suspect you might hear a little bit more about this in the future as well from us. And then, narrow aisles. And then there's technologies that get a lot of press. You see some interesting logos here that address, things like trailer loading and unloading, a lot of a lot of chatter about trailer loading and unloading, of course, humanoids and other types of niche payloads. And, you know, while while you may see a robot doing this or a company doing it for one company, by no means can we suggest that these technologies are are available, in in a mature way at scale. Right? Where you're really ready to deploy it with great confidence and great value. Okay? So, this is the current state according to Gartner, the current state of automation adoption in the warehouse. So it's it's early days. Right? Thirteen percent fully deployed, thirty percent first deployment, thirty one percent beginning implementation, and, you know, twenty seven percent, nineteen plus eight. Twenty seven percent are just sort of picking the tires, nine percent or really no plan. So it still is early innings here, for the markets that we serve and and and the the, the markets that you all out there serve as well. And so let's talk about that set. The thirty one plus thirty, that sixty one plus plus thirteen, that's seventy four. It's pretty good math. So you've deployed, probably, you know, most for the most part of first deployment or maybe a a slight second deployment or just beginning implementation. Now what now what do I do? So last year, we spent the whole year talking about mythbusters and really how to adopt, how to overcome fear, uncertainty, and doubt to to start your automation journey. Even the year before that, we, we we addressed, we addressed the this concept of from robot to robot, which is really that first step. This year is really all about the second, third, fourth step and really talking to experts to look around corners. Look around corners, if you will. And think about, okay. I've done it once where I have two or three robots. What's gonna happen when I have twenty? Okay? And no better person than Nikki Slaughter, from our company to talk about that. And, but before we get to the topic of the day, we realize that there are common pitfalls to scaling automation. And these are sort of a cross section of different snippets and experts that I've I've collected over the years. And really what we see, in our own, in our own backyard as well. So poor requirements definition and, you know, evaluating what your IT infrastructure is maybe works for one robot or two, but then when you see start branching out, you you you find it's not sufficient. Underestimating the the need for solution flexibility, so it may work once, but then all of a sudden the circ environment circumstances change and it and it it's not flexible enough to change. You're overlooking support, factors, you know, when choosing a solution. So once again, it looks nice shiny object that works, and then when you need support, is there a support infrastructure to to work with you to to, to, you know, tune the system for for what you need or just to solve an immediate problem? Underestimating the impact of deployment, and on the changing scope of your business. Also, cultural factors within your company. We see this all the time. Nikki sees this every day. Right? These are all different cultures and how they run their operations. And, you know, culture doesn't only exist in HQ. Right? It exists all over the company, and I would say really strongly, in fact, in in operation capacity as well, warehouses and factories. And, those cultural factors can have an impact on new scaling automation, and certainly, we deal with a fair share of that. Weak goal alignment. Often, we see a tangle between and a tug tug of war between, the different departments that are have different designs about what they want to do with with this technology. And and then, you know, failure to forecast your warehouse landscape over time. You know, in particular, growth. Right? You start slow, you start small, and then you realize, my gosh. I didn't think big enough. Right? I didn't think bold enough. I didn't think big enough. I'm not ready. My competitors have already adopted this technology at scale, and they're passing me by. Right? And in fact, we are dealing with customers right now, and we're so pleased to have them, that look at logistics as a competitive moat for their company. Right? Not only to deliver gains, but also to deliver value, speed to market, like enabling them to get material out into the market faster or enabling them to reduce prices for their customer or or increase safety or, improve, labor retention. These are, you know, losing automation and logistics capabilities, and advancement as a competitive mode for the company. Very strong value prop there. So with that, let's get to our theme today behind every grow great robot is a strong human. So we'll get to, what Nikki does in the sack. Okay? But let's just talk about this theme, Nikki. Where do we come up with this? I don't I mean, we've been talking a lot over the last month. What is this one all about, really? So yeah. Again, so one of the teams that we have here at Vecna is our twenty four seven support staff, PCC. They're watching our robots. They're making sure that they're running. They're watching your operations and also working alongside your team, but remotely to make sure that the robots are doing exactly what they need for you. So, again, that's really what's going on with our our strong humans behind our robots. It's just making sure that we are providing the best service and also supporting your teams and their daily goals as well. And, and I think it's a touch it's it's a tip of the cap to the beyond that that it's a a a crafty play on words a little bit. True. And and I would say somewhat ironical. It's kind of true as to where the market is today. Right? We all wanna believe in perfect autonomy, lights out automation. There's still humans behind what makes this robot these robots great. Not to serve in a metaphysical and engineering context, but in a in a, a daily, weekly, monthly context. And not only in the warehouse, right, with the management teams and training and and and the cultural factors we talked about, but also in companies like ours that have better responsibility to make sure that this technology, suits your environment now and also adapts to the changing your changing needs over time. So with that, Nikki, why don't you talk a little bit about the, the function that you run. At Becca, you mentioned our pivotal command center. So let's Sure. Maybe give everybody a glimpse, and then we'll get into the theme for the day. Yep. Yep. So, again, so our remote staff, we call them PCC, Pivotal Command Center. They are a twenty four seven, three sixty five staff who are able to remotely monitor, the robots that are out in the field, out in your facilities, making sure again that the robots are doing what they're supposed to. If they get into a situation where they are unable to plan or do their own thing around obstacles or other, issues in a way, our team is also able to support in a way, from our building here and, also wherever, wherever those agents are. So we're working alongside your humans as well. A lot of our customers, we actually have, chats or email chains with them to make sure that we can provide assistance in those needs as well in case there is something that we need your team to help out with. So, again, we're working alongside not just the robots, but your humans and your operators. Yeah. And this is, this is not an optional service. We don't charge for this. This is part of the system. Mhmm. Right? This is part of our system. There are certainly aspects of this offering or this solution that, are automated in and of themselves. Mhmm. But, fundamentally, we believe that for safety purposes, for adoption purposes, for growth, this eye in the sky is really required to, in particular at this phase of of adoption. Right? The maturity of this type of technology moving heavy loads. Right? We we're we're we we focus on carts and and pallets, heavy carts and pallets. That's what we do. And these, these robots are moving quite quickly, and they're in chaotic environments. And, you know, we we happen to believe this is a significant differentiator from us for us, and and, it's all part of the it's all wrapped into the system. It's not a it's not an add on. Right? Right. There's a tremendous benefit afforded to us by doing this for for you to deliver value back to you. And so I think that's what we're gonna be spending time on. Right? Humans behind the robots to make the robots great. And then and also I think to make your operation great. So let's get going. The first vignette here, let's walk through this. So, we have two scenarios here. We have the robot wrangler scenario. Right? And then, and then we have the remote monitoring scenario. So, you know, what's the difference between why is one better than the other? And and, certainly, you're representing the one on the right. So let's talk about what you get out of the one on the right versus the one on the left. Yep. Yep. Definitely. So, so and, again, I think you had a a webinar or not, too recently about a robot wrangler. So, there's benefit to robot wranglers, but there's also certain things that are a little bit faster and easier for remote monitoring instead. So, if there's a robot that's calling for help in trouble, needs needs some assistance, again, a robot wrangler could be a lot slower. A lot of these facilities are very large. It's hard to get from point a to point b for a person. But for remote monitoring, we can be there right away. So as soon as that robot, it starts calling for help, one of our agents is able to tap in, check out the situation, remotely help the robot in those areas, and then we minimize the need for the robot wrangler to be running all over your facility. Hopefully, we're only asking for their help for those robots that really truly need on-site help. And all the other ones, we're supporting remotely and much faster than your, site operators can get there. The other nice thing with remote monitoring is that we can eliminate a lot of the room for error that manual drivers can get into. When we're supporting, our safety system is still in the loop. So there's nothing we can do remotely that would be considered unsafe. The system is still enabled. We still have all our safety sensors, so we're limited in terms of how much we can, help the robot or do certain things. And, also, for multitasking, sometimes, again, your on-site operators are doing multiple different things. For us, we're tapped into one robot at a time. We're focused on getting that one completed and and helped on its way as well. Yeah. And then the only other thing again for remote monitoring, we're we're pretty much invisible to your operation. So there's a lot of things that we might have help a robot, out with, and your operators don't need to be worried or concerned about it. We're making sure that the robots are moving, doing their thing, keeping up with the flow of traffic, and your, your site team doesn't need to worry about that at all. Right. And the robot Wrangler doesn't scale well. That's right. Mhmm. So, yeah, you can say, well, I'll I'll have a floater, and I'll watch the robots in whatever capacity that means. And then and then I'll do other things. You know, they could largely speaking only respond to one issue at a time. And, and then when you start adding robots, are you gonna add more robot wranglers? Right? It kinda it kinda defeats the purpose of what we're trying to do here. Right? Now there I guess, there are scenarios with complex equipment and other types of systems where you may may need that. And and, certainly, if you have thirty, forty robots, right, it might be useful to have somebody who really understands and is the main connection point to a to a robots robotic company. I'm not really talking about a champion or or somebody who's driving enablement or training or things of those natures. I'm really talking about, you know, monitoring and ensuring that the system is optimized, stepping in when there's issues because there's always issues. Right? And, the the, the solution on the right, which is what we offer, really does scale beautifully scale beautifully. And, and, it there really are other significant benefits to it as well. But here we go. So robot wrangler versus monitoring. Monitoring wins. Okay. Alright. Let's move on here. So love this one. We struggle to come up with a really this is not the perfect analogy, but we but Nikki and I thought this would be a good way to relate what, the team behind the great robot. Right? The team behind the great robot. Strong team. And I think Formula One is hot right now, is a good analogy. So why don't we walk through that, Nikki? Sure. Sure. Yeah. So, again, you can think about our remote support staff team just like that Formula One pit crew. Again, we're here supporting the robot, making sure it's doing its job, getting from point a to point b, without too many issues in the way. And, again, the other piece of this is that we're here to also evaluate system performance. So we're looking at things in the ebb and flow of your day to day to say, hey. These robots over here are acting a little bit differently today. What's going on in the operations to cause that difference? Can we optimize the flow of traffic in another area to gain back that system performance, or do we know that it's just a busy day and this is the type of traffic that we'll be working with? So we really can see and understand those dips and spikes in your day to day. If it's seasonal, we also understand it as well. Again, as we're watching your robots and supporting your robots, we get used to really what does a busy day look like, what is a potentially slow day, which does happen, and when is one of those changes actually something more than just seasonality? When is it because your flows are actually changing over time, or you're going through maintenance in a certain part of your building, or you're growing and adding to your operations. So since we're supporting day to day, we we are getting used to how you guys operate and how the robot should operate alongside your humans and alongside your operations. Right. Where where the pit crew breaks down just a little bit, worth me diving here, but I won't belabor it, is, you know, we perceive the pit crew as that that group that swarms and helps to win the day or or win that tire change that then wins the day. We probably don't see it, but these pit crews, like, support competitiveness and tuning from race to race over the course of the season. And I think you've covered that, Nikki. It's not just about diving in and having a transaction in that day, which I think is really important. It's also about, you know, winning the season. Mhmm. What do we have to do to win the season? And, and think you've you provided a few other arguments with that about that or or suggestions about that later on here. But great. Your own formula one pit crew, I think your whole team should you should get some nice pit crew, you know, forms for them. You know? Like, we should do that. We're have them wear helmets or something. That would be a lot of fun. Things are flowing. Right? This is an interesting one that, folks out there may not appreciate. Right? And this is the idea of of, purse supporting personalization, I think. And so why don't we walk through what we're what we're trying to convey here? Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So, so this one, again, this is a a concept we're trying to pull together. So, one of the things in, a lot of operations who are getting used to automation for the first time is that you're often tracking very different, KPIs or goals than you would for manual operations. For robotics, we're looking at very different things and how are the robots, behaving in certain areas. Are there congestion points? It's it's in addition to just how many pallets per hour. There's there's more to track and more to look at to optimize your robot workflows. And, again, it's very different than humans because we're relying on sensors, we're also relying on remote monitoring and things like that. So we're very in tune with how your operations are working once we get your robots up and running, and ways that we can actually implement things that will work better for you and for your workflows. Mhmm. So we understand the robots. We understand the people. We understand different types of workflows and can actually build on that from other customers to find best practices that could work for your business and also work for the ebbs and flows of your cycles as well. So, again, we're constantly learning from every installation we have, every different type of customer, and we can help apply that for you, especially, especially for customers who are unfamiliar with how to, how to optimize the automation alongside your human workforce. Right. I think this is really important here, and let's let's extend this analogy. When you're shopping online, you think about you know, you prob may may think about the support as just, like, my order wasn't shipped on time or you can't why can't how come when I click on the size of the shoe and it doesn't appear in my in my shopping bag or something like that. Right? And so, certainly, we provide an element of support there. But that's not what Nikki is talking about here. Right? Nikki is talking about this idea of giving you a human in the loop platform for, personalizing the automation experience within your facility over time. Okay? And then, dare I say, exploring options in real time for how you can maneuver around some seasonal anomaly or a breakdown in your facility or, you know, an area of the facility that's that's on lockdown for repair or, you know, there's replenishment happening or a rack is being fixed or whatever. Really figuring out how to keep the goods moving. Right? Either strategically, transactionally, today, because there's a thing, or strategically, through heat mapping and other things about how to optimize the flow of materials, into the future. Right? There you go. Not just about support. Right? Hopefully, this analogy breakthrough for you all around personalizing for a for an experience. Right? For okay. Good. Let's keep going here. We have a few more vignettes. Oh, I love this one. So we like to say that we have a three three x or three triple safety layer, at the the hardware software level of of the technology. I would argue that there's actually a fourth layer. We have a fourth layer of safety in that, and that is the command center. So let's walk through why why we make that claim. Why why is the command center adding a fourth layer of, of safety to this to our system? Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So, again, with any technology, technology has its limits. We're relying on sensors, relying on all this different data coming through the system to compute and make sure the robot's going to the right places, reacting to the right things when it's stopping for obstacles, people in the way, things like that. But, again, there's certain situations where our sensors, maybe need that, like, extra thing to say, hey. This this robot stopped for something, but we're not really sure what that something is. Once our, remote support agents kinda tap into that robot, take a look around, they're also looking through our sensors. They're also looking through we have static cameras to ensure that the situation in front and around the robot is actually safe to allow that robot to proceed. So our sensors will, again, put the robot into a safe state and keep it there until we're able to kind of come in, look, assess the situation, and potentially allow the robot to move on. Or if there's a sit a situation where we can't move on, maybe, again, we've, the robot's gotten to a point in the building where, hey. We see a bunch of cones in our way, and it looks like there's maintenance staff. Our robots, sorry. Our agents, not our robots, will look at the, sensor data, look at cameras, and see that situation, ask your team through email, chat, however we need to get in touch, and say, hey. It looks like we've we've stopped in front of the maintenance facility. What's going on? Should we put our robots in a different way? Should we stop them? So it is. It's a an additional layer on top to just ensure that the robots are operating safely in your building. Yeah. Very good. Alright. We gotta move on here. I just, had a look at the time, so time check. So and that set is about improvement. Right? About, not immediate, improvement or safety at moment in time and whatnot. It's also really about, ongoing or continuous improvement. So so let's talk about that. How how is it that that, our command center and the humans in the loop behind the scenes in our system make the system better, for, for our customers? Sure. Absolutely. Again, with with us monitoring your sites every day, we get used to what looks good, what looks bad, what things we need to improve upon. We use a lot of the data from our robots to, develop and make our robots better for everyone, as well as for individual sites. And we're also looking at different things of, kind of best practices. So maybe the way one site is running the robots could be applied to another site. Maybe not one to one, but maybe we're using pieces of that. So we use a lot of that to understand how do we implement better, how do we work through the seasonality change with another customer, maybe reference some of the things that have worked elsewhere. Or even with our testing, certain things that we're saying, hey. We have some new features coming out. We think it'll directly benefit your facility. So let's look at how we might apply that as well. Right. So this is you a lot of goodness here. I'll be brief. There's a proactive nature to this. There is a network effect to it. Right? Mhmm. So she's as Nikki said, you know, we're seeing issues or ways that other sites are handling it amongst the hundreds of robots that we have deployed. You're getting all the value of that, you know, of ideation back into how it optimize your your facility, not to mention how it gets into our development team and and where how we where how we improve our our software. Right? And we blow down new software. You see the benefits of that. You may not realize that it's coming from the humans in the loop, that are behind the scenes monitoring and and supporting you every day. Okay. And lastly, I love this one. You may not realize it as well, but, you know, a lot of our customers are trying to do new things. And, unless you're gonna have a bunch of folks babysitting and watching, which is expensive, which happens from time to time, certainly at the beginning of a deployment, it happens. Right? But we're talking about over time. How how is it that our humans in the loop here behind the scenes, support experimentation? Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So, we're actually doing quite a lot of experimentation with several of our customers right now. Some of the things we do are lights out automation. So we actually have one customer who's looking to figure out how can they do lights out for the first time with no humans around. How do we set this up? How does it work? Our remote support staff is supporting those operations right now. It's working actually really well. We have a plan in action with them where we communicate ahead of time exactly what's gonna happen for that particular night. And in the morning, we might leave some notes for them to say what we saw, what needs to be improved upon, and kind of continue that iteration until we get to a point where we're comfortable to expand upon that. Another one we do is charge cycle management. So there's some sites who are looking at how do we optimize or change how we charge ours our robots at different times, make sure we always have enough robots moving product. So we're experimenting with what that schedule might look like. And, again, our remote support staff is managing a lot of that until we get to the point where we like that, like that schedule and can implement it for the long term. I mean, so much goodness there. Think about you think about applying automation to the the daily working hours. But once you contemplate that you've got someone watching and supporting you behind the scenes and there's a model of safety and support, you can start thinking about, well, what is it when when I'm asleep? You know, how is the system optimizing or improving itself? You know, can we be moving, dunnage or empty pallets or other material to get ready for the next day overnight? Can we do that overnight? I never thought about doing that. I don't have to hate people. I know night shift that I don't think they do it over time. And we can experiment with things at night. Experiment with new text workflows and things with robots that you hear too far maybe couldn't contemplate with humans. So and there's a whole there's a litany of other types of experiments that we run because there's there's there's a a a great human behind this, you know, behind the strong robot. Right? So, yeah, I I love this one. I love this one. It may be it may be a topic for a whole other a whole other world, to be honest. Yeah. Anyway, we're running running short on time here. Just wanted to wrap it up here. Look. If you're looking to adopt this technology for the first time or get scale, you know, I I show this every month. We have a fairly strict formula about how we get you from robot to robot that we run through from from discovery all the way through to deployment and then scale. And we follow this, effectively. It really gets our customers comfortable with the technology and then contemplating deploying it, more effectively within a site or or across sites. Right? And it applies to both. I mentioned this earlier. We spent a lot of time and energy trying to inform you all out there about, the developments in this market and how to adopt this technology, in a meaningful way. So if you'd like to, learn a little bit more about some of the other topics that we've covered in the past, hop on to our webinars page, and they're all there. Once again, little snippets, as well as, ninety second snippets, or previews or, you can watch full webinars too and follow us on LinkedIn. Clint does a great job. Two or three postings a day, a lot of fun out there, especially on weekends. We got some fun weekend posts as well. So follow us on LinkedIn. We always have some great announcements and useful tidbits there, and we certainly promote these webinars too. So with that, Nikki, thanks a ton. Have a great weekend. We appreciate your, your support here. And, yeah, you bet. And on behalf of everybody else at, BECCA and robotics, Clint, of course, who runs everything behind the scenes and everybody else at BECCA. Have a great long weekend, everybody. See you next week. Bye. Thank you.