The prestigious consulting firm specialized in digital transformation Gartner predicts that by 2028, 50% of large businesses will have adopted some form of intralogistic intelligent robots (ISRs) in their warehousing or manufacturing operations. This market is therefore expected to grow exponentially over the next decade. Is it hyperbole? According to the firm's research, which covers several sectors of activity, several business sizes and several geographical areas, these figures will soon come to fruition.
The survey in a few figures...
97% of respondents in this survey responded to invest or plan to invest in some form of cyber-physical automation. 30% said workforce and talent issues were one of their top two internal challenges and 59% said workforce availability issues were making them consider automation.
When asked specifically about robotics, 96% of respondents are investing or planning to invest in robotics in the next two years, with 36% of them either fully deployed (7%) or under deployment (29%).
In addition, 93% of current robot users say they planned to increase the size of their robot fleet, and 94% said they were looking for new use cases for robotics in their operations.
Intelligent robots for intralogistics
All of this combined explains why. the ESI market will continue to grow just as rapidly. Because of this rapid growth, this survey also reveals that 40% of large businesses will have heterogeneous fleets of forklifts in their warehouses over the next five years. But it does create challenges for businesses. In fact, How to integrate and orchestrate the work of a heterogeneous fleet of robots?
As businesses deploy heterogeneous fleets of robots from different suppliers and performing various tasks, integrating and orchestrating the work of this diverse fleet of robots will require standardized software that can easily unify a variety of agents and robot platforms. Gartner calls these emerging software multi-agent orchestration platforms.
These solutions act as smart middleware that integrate and orchestrate work between various business applications, heterogeneous fleets of operational robots, and other automated agents such as doors or elevators. These solutions Assign work to the right robots based on the characteristics of the immediate tasks and orchestrate communication between different robot platforms and other types of automation agents.
The process of adopting and scaling the robot fleet
When businesses invest in their first ISR platform, they usually just create a single connection between their business applications — such as a warehouse management system — and their robot supplier's fleet management system. This solution, which is not optimal, works for a single robot. However, As a company's robot fleet grows, simple point-to-point API integration won't be enough. Businesses will need a orchestration capacity capable of assigning work to the right robots based on information in near real time taking into account the characteristics of the activity and the capabilities of the various automation agents. This will reduce the time, effort, and costs associated with integrating new robots, as well as support costs, which will ultimately make organizations more efficient, as work will be assigned to the robot that is best suited to the task.
As a result, businesses will need a platform that can integrate and orchestrate work across their robot fleets. That's why by 2026, more than 50% of companies deploying intralogistic robots will adopt a multi-agent orchestration platform.
To achieve this, businesses need to start with analyze integration needs as the robot fleet extends beyond a single supplier. At the same time, they must study how work will be assigned to different robots and other automation agents, such as doors or elevators, and determine what orchestration logic will be required to take care of these tasks simultaneously.
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Sources: StoryShaper, Gartner
