BY BEN AMES, SENIOR NEWS EDITOR
THE DC VELOCITY Q&A
thoughtleaders
24 DC VELOCITY DECEMBER 2019 www.dcvelocity.com
Warehouse robots
are becoming
cheaper and more
collaborative all
the time. But that
doesn’t mean
they’re all ready
for 24/7 use,
cautions Professor
Christian Wurll.
DR. CHRISTIAN WURLL IS A PROFESSOR OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING AND
automation at the University of Applied Sciences in Karlsruhe, Germany. Dr. Wurll
has extensive experience in the study and application of robotics and automation.
Before entering the academic world, he held executive positions at companies including
Swisslog Automation, Grenzebach, and Kuka Robotics.
Dr. Wurll studied control theory and robotics at the University of Karlsruhe,
Germany, where he earned a master of science degree in electrical engineering and a
Ph.D. in computer science. He has published extensively on robotics, vision, and search
algorithms. Dr. Wurll spoke with DC VELOCITY Senior News Editor Ben Ames at the
MHI Fall Conference in La Quinta, California.
QSupply chain managers are facing many challenges. They are dealing with labor shortages and demands for ever-faster fulfillment. The robots are coming, which
may help to ease the labor crunch. But are they really ready for 24/7 use yet?
AI have implemented many systems and applications in logistics warehouses, but still using the traditional industrial robot arms, which are basically caged in, in order
to protect the people running the applications. However, there is a new trend coming
with all the cheaper robots—we call them “collaborative robots.” They are designed and
developed to run without a safety fence, but that requires that these robots be operated
in accordance with certain rules and safety precautions.
What we observe in the European Union is that the machine laws are pretty tough.
[Regulators] have set the forces applied to, say, a collision with a human pretty low,
which means that you have to run these applications at very, very low speeds. But that
can make it difficult to meet productivity goals. You want to achieve high throughput
rates, but you can’t achieve that running at a very slow pace. That means that it is a hindrance to actually deploy these robots in the numbers the industry is really looking to do.
Q For a return on investment, you really need to ensure that the robots compare favor- ably with a human who’s doing the same work. Robots might be more reliable—
INTERVIEW WITH DR. CHRISTIAN WURLL
Is the industry
robot-ready?
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