Warehouse Technology Trends: Week 6

TOPIC: The Future of Augmented Reality: Floating Warehouses and Automated Drone Fleet

Hello SCM373! For our Week 6 blog post, we are going to discuss the role of Augmented Reality (AR) in near-to-mid future. Throughout the past six weeks, we have cited numerous examples of AR currently used in traditional brick-and-mortar and e-commerce warehousing. Although AR is a relatively new technology still in its infancy, its machine-learning capabilities far outweigh the initial investment required for the technology. As AR becomes smarter each and every day as it learns its way throughout the warehouse, it has the potential to change the very way we think of traditional warehousing.

In general, warehouses are traditionally corrugated metal buildings that require significant human assistance and capital requirements to process customer orders. The advent of the computer revolutionized the speed and agility of warehouse processing. Rather than humans sorting, collecting, packaging and loading goods into a transport vehicle, robots and other human-assisted technologies have simplified the back-breaking work that was once required of warehouse personnel.

But Amazon is looking to change the very way we look at traditional warehousing. Late last year, they released a bold plan that showed the world just how vital of an asset AR is in the warehousing space. They have proposed an airship warehouse concept that abandons the traditional, physical warehouse for one that hovers in the sky. Embedded here is a short video describing Amazon’s fascinating endeavor to create an airborne fulfillment center (AFC), where AR interacts wireless communication systems, drone delivery units, HD cameras and weather-monitoring equipment to create the first-ever fully autonomous warehouse. Although this endeavor sounds more-or-less like fiction rather than reality, it has the potential to forever cement AR as an industry-leading technology in the supply chain space.

Amazon’s airborne monitoring station (AMS) proposal consists of a fleet of floating warehouses that hover anywhere between 500-100 feet in the air. Walmart has also followed suit with a similar project in hopes to one-up Amazon and increase the competition. Both firms believe that this concept is justifiable because it will reduce both delivery times and last-mile costs in densely-populated areas. Last mile costs are the final expenses incurred on a package before the shipment reaches the hands of the customer.

Although Amazon has filed a patent for this “hovering warehouse” concept, we may never live to see the day where Hindenburg-style blimps eerily hover around East Lansing. The two main reasons why Amazon has filed this patent is to protect their intellectual property in the event they explore the idea in more detail in the future. Another reason why is to ensure that Walmart does not follow suit and copy in a similar fashion and lead to monetary losses. But as of currently, our technology is not yet advanced enough to support fully autonomous warehouse infrastructure.