As fate would have it, I found myself attending the 2025 materials handling trade show in March and being in an exhibition booth directly opposite across from a robotics manufacturer (again). This time, the robots were doing more complex tasks at a faster pace than was the case two years ago.
Some history:
Nearly two years ago, I was attending America’s large material handling industry’s annual trade show, doing booth duty for a company. Diagonally across the main aisle was a robotics company’s booth. On the closest corner to my line of sight was a stationary robot that was tasked with putting cartons on a pallet in a logical sequence and then removing them. It did this repetitively throughout the show. Or at least tried to.
What I observed at least multiple times a day during show hours was the robot “missing the mark” as it took a carton (by suction on the top of the carton) from the floor while transferring it to a position on the pallet. Sadly, it was not perfectly accurate in “seeing” the destination space’s boundaries, and it was off just enough to have the carton fall over and out of position.
When this happened, a human would rush over to the robot, stop it, tidy up the pallet, and make an adjustment to the robot. Upon restarting the robot, all would be well for about an hour or so until the next spill occurred. Our human hero again came to the rescue, and all was right with the world.
What this young human was doing was wrangling the robot well before the job title “robot wrangler” was in widespread circulation.
As I headed again to the 2025 show, I expected that robots like this would be performing optimally given the advances in robotics, vision systems, AI (artificial intelligence)-infusion, and other operational characteristics.
Here’s what I saw from my vantage point on the floor of the show:
There were twelve robot “pickers” running within a grid of picking locations with “stop / go” traffic control coordinating their movements.
Faster and more complex, which meant that the robots got into trouble faster, requiring “corrective assistance” from a larger force of human robot wranglers.
Word got around about these robots colliding at higher speeds over a complex grid of picking locations. This drew a large crowd of attendees waiting on the sidelines to see the “show.” When a crash occurred, more than once a day, up went the smartphones to capture the recovery efforts, which involved humans emerging from a protective control cage, climbing into the robot movement arena, wrangling the fallen robots up from the floor and aligning them back onto the “track” along the picking locations.
All the cheers and applause of the sizeable audience when order was restored. This would have made for a great reality TV show!
But the interesting thing is there’s a new warehousing job category that is needed to get robots out of a jam when they operate outside of their “normal” programmed behavior. This is a definite shift in the future of work in warehouses and distribution centers. Meet the Robot Wranglers.
Let’s first make the important distinction between a “robot engineer” and a “robot wrangler.” A helpful guide to the differences can be found in this article from Unmudl. The fundamental distinction between them is:
“While Robot Engineers design the systems, Robot Wranglers keep them in check, making sure they perform day-to-day tasks effectively.”
This wrangler description applies perfectly to the young human mentioned above. Here’s The Wall Street Journal’s ($) recent report on wranglers in warehouses.
Now the important question: How much does a robot wrangler make annually? Here’s Glassdoor’s perspective. Compare that with Zippia’s perspective on human warehouse workers.
Well, the plus $31,388 upside being a robot wrangler is significant. How many wranglers are needed in a warehouse where robots have replaced humans?
Here’s a recent perspective in the AutomatedWarehouse publication.
Key Excerpt
“We’ve seen 1:4 or 1:10 ratios of people required to keep robots going,” said Michael Bearman, chief customer officer at Vecna Robotics Inc.. “Some people call such wranglers ‘robot babysitters,’ and old-school AGVs [automated guided vehicles] pose lots of challenges. For instance, these robots aren’t that connected, so you may not know where in a 1 million-sq.-ft. warehouse exactly where they are.”
What is the point? What “data dots” need to be connected?
As I have previously pointed out, doing a ROI (return on investment) assessment when considering robotic technology to replace humans for warehouse jobs may be missing crucial data points. In earlier posts, energy consumption increases associated with robotic installations may be a hidden data point.
The cost “savings” calculation for a robotic offset to human labor may not account for the need for—and upside cost of—human robot wranglers. Roughly, using the data salary data points above, a wrangler costs the same as two “traditional” human warehouse workers.
That factor alone can negatively impact the ROI for robotics adoption.
This gave me the opportunity to do some “back of the envelope” math. Two years ago, there was a single human robot wrangler used to restore the robot’s ability to perform its task.
In this new situation, four human wranglers emerged from the control cage to correct the situation. These were the same people staffing the control consoles. Even using the most generous human / robot support ratio of one wrangler for ten robots, and putting aside the cost of the robots, the investment in higher-skilled humans increased.
The need for better educated robotics-trained humans will increase. Are we prepared for that shift?
About the Author
Tim Lindner develops multimodal technology solutions (voice / augmented reality / RF scanning) that focus on meeting or exceeding logistics and supply chain customers’ productivity improvement objectives. He can be reached at linkedin.com/in/timlindner.