Locus Robotics’ success is a tale of specializing in what works

“We’re fundamentally a software company,” Locus CEO Rick Faulk says with fun. We appear like a robot company, but we’re actually a software company.”

It’s a well-recognized refrain from corporations whose most public-facing products are hardware. That’s actually the case with Locus, which produces the best-known AMRs (autonomous mobile robots) not made by Amazon. While it’s true that these tote-moving systems are fundamental to the Massachusetts-based firm’s warehouse play, Faulk tells TechCrunch that the corporate’s software is what really sets the market leader apartment from the competition.

Locus currently offers fleet management software, essential to orchestrating robotic systems in a busy setting. That’s also a feature of the corporate’s latest offering, LocusHub Engine. Announced this week on the Modex supply chain show in Atlanta, the platform is designed to leverage the information collection that’s foundational to the corporate’s automation system. Very like your Roomba at home, Locus’ AMRs are filled with sensors that bring situational awareness and help it navigate around people, obstacles and other robots.

At their heart, they’re data-collecting machines which can be also quite good at moving heavy payloads around warehouse floors. The brand new software offering uses AI to process the huge troves of knowledge collected and offer predictions for what’s coming next.

“Most reporting in warehouses immediately is what we call ‘reactive,’” Faulk tells TechCrunch. “It’s what happened. Someone picked X variety of units per hour, here’s what number of it is best to pick for the day, week and month. We consider that’s great and we still need that, but we also consider in having predictive analytics to let you know what’s about to occur is incredibly necessary.”

Utilizing machine learning, predictive modeling offers suggestions for where warehouse managers should distribute staff — each human and robot. The software will also be used to discover bottlenecks and refine the AMRs’ routes for higher efficiency.

“We have now uniquely integrated data capture from our robots into our platform,” says Faulk. “For instance, I can go into my phone and take a look at any single robot in our system. I can actually control that robot and update that robot over my phone. We have now the capabilities to find a way to integrate each of those together.”

Locus’ founding was a direct results of Amazon’s 2012 Kiva Systems acquisition. Quiet Logistics, a former Kiva client, was amongst those customers left within the lurch when the retail giant decided to stop servicing outside corporations, as an alternative focusing the entire of its efforts on automating its own fulfilment processes. Quiet began its own robotics division in 2014, spinning out Locus the next yr.

The Kiva acquisition was a large catalyst for the category at large. Former executives from the robotics startup launched their very own Locus competitor, 6 River Systems. That company has struggled in recent times, nonetheless, following its acquisition by Shopify and subsequent sale to English grocery technology licenser Ocado Group. One other key competitor, Fetch Robotics, was founded in 2014. In 2021, the corporate was acquired by commerce tech giant Zebra. More recently, founder Melonee Smart left the corporate to affix Agility’s growing executive team.

You possibly can spot dozens of direct competitors walking through the halls of Modex this week, but Locus stays the market leader by a large margin. It’s a position further cemented by the explosion of interest in warehouse automation spurred on by the pandemic. Investor activity was at an all-time high, fueling corporations hoping to level the playing field in a world completely dominated by the 800-pound Amazon gorilla.

Investor excitement has since abated. While it’s true that loads of operations are still having difficulty hiring human labor, there’s still a regression to the mean. This January, Locus laid off a small variety of staffers — a figure the corporate has yet to reveal.

“We frankly over-hired on our go-to-markets, like a variety of our clients,” says Faulk. “We got here out of COVID and had projections on staffing needs and that form of thing that were probably overestimated.” The CEO adds that the “adjustments” happened amongst Locus’ go-to-market headcount, slightly than the engineering team.

But the corporate stays successful story within the category more broadly. It’s managed a gentle growth by specializing in existing client needs, slightly than attempting to be all things to all people. A decade after its founding, tote-transporting AMRs are still at the middle of all the things Locus does. Over time, the corporate has added products like Vector, which may port as much as 600 kilos and features specialized wheels that allow it to effectively drift sideways to higher navigate tight spaces. Each latest robot is — in essence — an iteration of Locus’ core robot product.

At present, human labor is important to that story. Locus doesn’t produce a mobile manipulator, meaning people need to move totes onto and off of the robot. Asked whether Locus will likely be the corporate to bring that technology to the warehouse, Faulk responds, “We are going to. We’re taking a look at a lot of things that may reduce labor in a constructing. We have now an R & D group that’s taking a look at things to totally automate a constructing. Over time, I’m sure we’ll figure it out.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Faulk isn’t particularly bullish on the role humanoid robots will play in that future.

“Possibly for specific functions it’d [be useful],” he explains. There are challenges today between battery life, cost, uptime and all the opposite things that go together with it. I believe eventually there could also be some use cases for specific things. But I believe that’s years away before there’s any scale. There are tests that will likely be done, but before anything gets to enterprise scale, I believe it should be years.”