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GXO CEO: Better robot hands, not Olympic-level humanoids, are what businesses really need
In today’s CEO Daily: Patrick Kelleher explains why robots that can do a Vulcan salute are more impressive than those that can run faster than Usain Bolt
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Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune .
Good morning. Last week’s World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing showcased more than 2,000 robots, one of which beat Usain Bolt’s world record in the 100-meter sprint. Another was able to surpass humans in a 2.88-meter standing high jump. But humanoids that can run and jump aren’t particularly useful to GXO Logistics CEO Patrick Kelleher. For his business, the ideal is one that has the strength to unload a truck, and the dexterity to sort lipstick—as some of the humanoids working in his operations can now do.
The $13.6 billion-a-year global logistics giant is running pilots with five humanoid-robotics providers, and another European pilot is expected later this year. A big focus is on what he calls “single-digit challenges”—getting robot hands to more closely mimic human hands.
“One of the great innovations we participated in this year was working on the ability of humanoid hands to go like this,” Kelleher told me, moving his fingers apart and together in a gesture that reminded me of a Vulcan salute . “This requires multiple flexible joints [and] will be game-changing in terms of what a humanoid can do.”
GXO is working with two kinds of humanoids: bipedals that walk around on two legs, and those that have a wheel and a base. What differentiates humanoids from industrial robots is their degrees of freedom, or ability to mimic the 200-plus movements that the human body is capable of. While a typical industrial robot has four to six movements, humanoids can now have more than 100 degrees of freedom.
Kelleher is not looking to replace the 150,000 people who currently work for him, he says, but rather to supplement them and address an industry-wide challenge. “We have 25% turnover in the warehouse environment … and we can’t find enough labor,” said Kelleher. “Humanoid robotics AI is really about helping our associates do their job better, more productively, and more easily, at higher quality.”
The experiments are turning GXO into a proving ground for a new model of human-machine collaboration: “The warehouse has become a hotbed of technology and innovation. We’re working with our partners on fully autonomous forklifts and humanoids that work where it’s minus 32 degrees, in the freezer,” he told me. “It used to be warehousing and outsourcing was about labor arbitrage, getting people to do a job at lower cost, and it’s really evolved now to become an arbitrage of expertise …. We are the living lab. It’s exciting.” Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at [email protected]
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