The mobile robot industry is challenged with providing innovative products without increasing costs. As a result, today's playing field is much more diverse in both regional players and the variety of robots than it was just three years ago.
Early mobile robot players who invested in this space in 2010 were not expecting such a rapid change. They are now faced with two choices:
Expand their fleet variety at the expense of cost.
Open their ecosystem to third party robot players.
End-users also did not anticipate their automation needs to expand so rapidly and the market
offerings to be so diverse. They are now faced with two choices:
Rely on a single AGV/AMR brand to fulfil their entire needs from a plant/country level.
Use a brand neutral platform with a high degree of flexibility.
When we look at the current industry trend, both end-users and OEMs are likely to veer
away from closed ecosystem models and embrace more interoperable systems to lower the operational cost and increase flexibility. To dive into the categories of interoperability level of AMR system interfaces, please check here.