VIDEO SERIES: Augmented reality in warehouse automation

Watch as LogistiVIEW Founder and CEO, Seth Patin, is interviewed by Robotics & Automation News Editor, Abdul Montaqim. 

In this video series with Robotics and Automation, you'll learn how LogistiVIEW has built the first AI-driven workflow platform for the frontline workers to help them make better, more accurate decisions.

Video transcription

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Abdul Montaqim, Editor of Robotics and Automation
Hello, my name is Abdul Montaqim. I'm editor of RoboticsandAutomationNews.com. In this interview, I speak to Seth Patin, Founder and CEO of LogisitiVIEW, a developer and supplier of technologies for warehouse automation. Its areas of expertise include augmented and virtual reality, smart glasses, and related fields, which is artificial intelligence.
 
Seth Patin, Founder and CEO of LogistiVIEW
My name is Seth Patin, I am the Founder and CEO of LogistiVIEW and Accelogix. LogistiVIEW is a connected worker technology platform that is designed to improve the productivity and job satisfaction of frontline workers. And that background and experience really comes from partially from my other company, which is called Accelogix, which is a consulting firm that specializes in warehouse and transportation management solutions. So I've been in supply chain technology, in essence, my entire career just under 20 years now. And that background is what led me to found LogistiVIEW in the first place. The experience of watching call it quote unquote, state of the art technology get deployed, and, and really leave something to be desired in the way that it interfaces with people. Ultimately, workforce technology should be simple, it should be easy for people to use, and I find that it’s all too often not the case.
 
Abdul Montaqim, Editor of Robotics and Automation
Right, and we at Robotics and Automation News recently published an article about LogistiVIEW, which I found really interesting, because I do we find it very interesting that augmented reality and smart glasses, in particular, have found an application in the industrial sector. Whereas when I first heard about them, they were probably sold or touted as a sort of consumer technology where people would be wearing them on the street and sort of figuring out where they're going, but a little bit like maps or something like that, but they definitely found an application, the logistics sector. Could you explain how your company uses technologies that were mentioned in the article like augmented reality, artificial intelligence and smart glasses, particularly busy holiday season coming up for companies like yours?
 
Seth Patin, Founder and CEO of LogistiVIEW
Yeah, definitely. You know, it's interesting, you mentioned that this technology kind of started with the idea that perhaps it could be consumer targeted, that really is something that most people back in the 2010 to the 2014 year were really convinced was going to be the case. And of course, Google Glass became the most visible attempt to introduce smart glasses to the masses. And the reality is that that technology was, I think, a little bit disconcerting to a lot of people simply because having always on video, meant that you could be accidentally captured and privacy was a much bigger concern. For people who didn't want to be on video. I think the reason that smart glasses have become more popular in the enterprise space in the workforce space, is because we're already used to being monitored to a certain degree in, in a work environment. There's, you know, security cameras, everywhere you turn, even in, even in public, there's security cameras everywhere you turn. And so there's a certain degree to which we've accepted and adopted, the reality that we're often on camera. And so in a work environment where there's an expectation of, you know, have some monitoring, it becomes easier to trust the technology as not being a privacy concern. Of course, that is still a major factor in our solution. So we, we make sure that the video feeds if they're going to be used or use securely, but those, that technology is much more accepted in the workplace. And so as a result, the simplicity of user interaction, or the simplicity of adopting the technology for the actual end, end user, the worker, because it's so much easier with your with smart glasses and augmented reality. Rather than holding a tablet device or a handheld computer, or worse yet, sitting at a workstation and working there. Or even worse, you had using a long form sheet of paper.

​With smart glasses, you can simplify instructions, and you can capture data visually, you can connect to the worker to everything around them in a way that is very visual and intuitive. And by making the work and the instructions visual and intuitive, you in essence, have the ability to make things as simple as a stop and go light.  I use that as a common example because if you look at every country around the world, they use green is green is go red is stop. The reason for this is because it's not you know, it's natural, it's intuitive to people, it doesn't matter what language you speak, it's very easy to understand that. And so that's really where we're trying to take work instructions, with visual capabilities of smart glasses and the visual recognition of graphical augmented reality. We're trying to make work more intuitive. Instead of having to make complex decisions. We're helping the user make simple decisions. That's where artificial intelligence comes in. Not the complex Skynet.Ai, anything like that, instead, something much more simplistic. But artificial intelligence is about helping people make better decisions. It really doesn't matter how complex the decision is, if you have three, there's three basic decisions that every frontline worker has to make thousands of times a day:  Am I in the right place? Do I have the right thing? What do I do next? Those three decisions, if we can shave half a second or a second or three seconds off of every time the worker makes that decision, it will make them faster, it will make them more accurate, it will probably keep them safer. And it will also improve their job satisfaction because they know they're doing the right thing. And because they're not getting reprimanded for quality issues or accuracy issues. It just makes things easier, really, truly for the both the company and the worker.
 
Abdul Montaqim, Editor of Robotics and Automation
And I just want to clarify, partly to myself that you provide technology solutions to logistics companies, specifically to warehouses. And you don't you aren't a logistics company yourself, you provide solutions to logistics companies? Have I got that right?
 
Seth Patin, Founder and CEO of LogistiVIEW
That is correct. Yeah, LogistiVIEW is a software company that specializes in workforce optimization technology. So we help logistics companies, really, in any industry vertical, we have no real specific industry specialization. We've built the software to be applicable to, in essence, any frontline labor task.
 
Abdul Montaqim, Editor of Robotics and Automation
And I just I find the development of software really, really complex thing to understand, and partly because I don't understand computer languages. But I imagine that it's even more difficult to develop for new devices like smart glasses and virtual reality in the kinds of things you're dealing with the just seeing one step beyond the development work that takes place where software is used on a computer regular sort of desktop computer, is that, would that be fair to say?
 
Seth Patin, Founder and CEO of LogistiVIEW
I would I would say yes, certainly, one of our challenges has been to solve problems that, no other really no other company has been able to solve. In doing so we've been able to build the first AI-driven workflow platform for the frontline user. And so part of this platform, part of the problems that we solved were ways to be able to process real-time computer vision and to be able to do real-world overlay augmented reality. So instead of producing a depiction of a shelf, for example, we actually show the user the shelf that they're staring at, and then we place in the users field of view, green boxes over the place where they're supposed to go, for example, or green box over the item that they're supposed to be interacting with. Those types of technology challenges are things that we've had to solve from scratch, there's many good tools out there that we've utilized in the process. There's a lot of standardizations happening in technology, certainly around the Android operating system and around things like computer vision and artificial intelligence. But how you put all those pieces together, is what really makes the LogistiVIEW solution unique. And that is I would, I would say that certainly no trivial task, it requires a degree of vision and a degree of technical skills, as you mentioned, that can definitely, I think set our technology apart. While simultaneously leveraging our experience to keep the actual user task very simple. Behind all of this, our simplicity is what we're trying to deliver to the end user. And behind it, we have this incredible technical complexity that hopefully the end user never sees, because they experience this simple job experience.
 
Abdul Montaqim, Editor of Robotics and Automation
Yeah, I just find it really interesting, the idea of looking through spectacles and being given information about, you know, what something contains where something is, is just, it's just brilliant technology, I wouldn't mind trying on a pair of those glasses, myself. And what I know you've given some examples of your technology, how its applied. But I was wondering if you could give us one or two more, maybe, from logistics, maybe from manufacturing, doesn't really matter what it is be more specific about what customers have done. Also, I hope you don’t mind, I combined more than one question in one question. But the idea of, I imagine that a lot of your customers want customized solutions for them, I appreciate that you are already doing a lot of things from scratch. But even more complicated is, as you think you into that is that customers have their own particular needs. What kind of choices? Do they have things in mind already? Like what kind of operating system they want to use? Or what brand of specs they want? Or anything like that? Or do they leave it mostly to you?
 
Seth Patin, Founder and CEO of LogistiVIEW
So two good questions that actually tie together very well. It's interesting, because many, many industrial environments, they're looking for solutions to problems, they're not looking for specific technology. So I can tell them, you know, hey, I have augmented reality and computer vision and smart glasses and all these other fantastic new unique things. And they say, so what, tell me, how does this apply to me? And so our focus is not about the technology. In fact, it's really about how our technology can solve a real-world problem. So if you take, you know, into a manufacturing environment, for example, there's a lot of challenges that are constant inside a manufacturing environment. And you may have a very complex line with incredibly complicated machines, but you still have numerous people on that process. You have to receive and manage raw materials, you have to deliver those raw materials to the line, often in sequenced order, you have to be able to handle line changeovers and machine maintenance, you have to be able to process finished goods and prepare them for distribution. All of those tasks are independent of the actual manufacturing itself. You know, once you get to any sort of finished goods that has come off of a process manufacturing line, now you get into discrete kitting, and packaging, and you know, and sometimes that's a custom job. So perhaps I have a half dozen different items and every customer has the ability now because of e-commerce to pick exactly what they want. And no two customers necessarily want the exact same thing. These types of complex commerce that we've created with data, with technology now require a similarly complex workforce technology, not to make the job more complicated for the end user.

But to hide the complexity and allow the end user to still do the task and exactly the way that they're supposed to: one task at a time. And so that's, that's a place where manufacturing as our SKU diversity gets more complex as the complexity of the supply chain brings in raw materials from more and more places, as the finished goods SKU count new goes from 10 finished goods SKUs to thousands - how do you manage that complexity? There has to be a data system to manage it. And that's where many information systems do this. But what we are trying to do is deliver that simply to an end user who can then do their task in the right way. You go down the line into distribution, and it behaves very similarly. Now I have how many thousands of finished goods SKUs that I need to get out to my customer base, and not just get to my customer base, I have to get them to my customer base exactly as the customer ordered them. If I don't ship to the retailer, they're going to charge me back. If I make a mistake shipping to Walmart, I'm going to get you know, I'm going to get ripped up by chargebacks. If I make a mistake shipping to Target, I'm going to get ripped up I chargebacks. So that retail channels accuracy is incredibly important. Predictability is incredibly important. Then you go to a direct to consumer model, and it becomes even more complicated. Not only do you have to deal with the cost of reverse logistics when the customers unhappy, then they go and shred you on you know on in online reviews. So the cost of accuracy issues there can be incredibly costly. It can be almost social network snowball type of effect if you have a series of tightly connected and or tightly clustered failures that are then publicly discussed. That's where improving the technology for how the frontline worker does their task, improving the simplicity of how they manage complex data changes between one order to the next. And then giving them the ability to execute on that complexity in a consistent way. That's really what this type of technology is about. And it actually goes farther on, even into the retail store. You think about a retailer who has to make sure the right products are on the shelves, that if a customer has an inquiry that they can find the product in the back of the store when it's already been sold out on a shelf as quickly as possible. Many stores to the to this day don't have a great experience with that. And so we need to give retail workers, we need to give warehouse workers, we need to give manufacturing workers, the ability to answer simple questions, but ultimately that have incredibly complex ramifications. Do I have something? In stock? Where is it? What do I do with it? Where do I take it? Those kinds of questions without orchestration, without intelligence, it just leaves a terrible customer experience. And so solving the customer experience problem is what our customers, in some way, shape, or form are ultimately trying to figure out. At every point in the value chain, it's a different kind of problem, whether it be manufacturing, whether it be distribution, or whether it be retail, but that's the problem they're trying to solve is: how do I make my experience to my customer more consistent, more efficient, more predictable. And that's what drives the discussions we have with our customers.
 
Abdul Montaqim, Editor of Robotics and Automation
Right, your ideal person to ask about what the phrase or term “digital supply chain” means, which I'll ask you in a minute, just when it's mentioned. So you can maybe think about it, but I wanted to some basic information about your company when it was founded. I noticed on your about page on your website, you're talking about the patent pending platform, I just wanted a brief comment about that. And also just the kind of sectors you're doing well in maybe the maybe I don't know if you can mention any of your customers, but some of the some of the sectors you're maybe strong in and a general overview of your of your business, really.
 
Seth Patin, Founder and CEO of LogistiVIEW
Certainly, the company was founded in 2014. It came actually out of an R&D project. In my consulting firm that I mentioned earlier, Accelogix. I actually came up with the vision for logistics you back in about 2006. And it's actually the “VIE”  technology, you know, was a term I came up with back in 2006-2007 timeframe, when I was trying to describe the technology that didn't exist yet. Namely, the concept of smart glasses and what at the time, what I called was a visual input enabled wearable. So if a VIEW device. Obviously that that acronym had intent. But that's actually where the “VIEW” in LogistiVIEW comes from. And when we talk about “VIEW” technology, it actually started with a with a very simple concept that has grown into something substantially transformative, or at least with transformative potential is the idea that your business systems can be more intelligent if they can see. So what if your business systems can see? And that's actually the premise upon which LogistiVIEW has built its technology and platform. And so when we say we're patent pending on our platform, the reason for that is because we've developed something that is indeed unique and the only one of its kind in the world that leverages computer vision as a primary input method. So we can do things like augmented reality overlays, we can do things like gesture recognition, we have the ability to do things that no other computer system, certainly no other frontline worker optimization platform, can do because we're using computer vision in a first of its kind way. That is where our patented platform is that you know, the patent is certainly a complicated concept, but at its core, that is a new way that we have, we have used computer vision to drive input to a computer system. And by doing so we were also able to introduce degree of augmented reality and artificial intelligence to the process. Because we are, of course, collecting a substantial amount of data. And some of that data is relevant to the end user and some of it is not. So we have to make sure that we're delivering only the relevant information to the worker.

One of the best ways to cause somebody to delay in their thought process or to slow down or to have uncertainty is to give them information overload. If we can give them very pertinent information, only the information they need to do their task in the most efficient way possible. And only the information that's relevant to them, it helps make them more confident, more accurate decisions, more efficiently as well. So that's really where the platform started, where the idea started, and then how it has developed over the course of time into this solution that we have today. Within the industry verticals, we have a lot of interest coming from a lot of different places. We have companies in the manufacturing sector talking about things like sequencing, kitting, basic inventory management as well as line changeovers and audit inspection type of activities as well. All of that information, much of it today is still tracked with paper. And you talked about digitization, I definitely have some ideas on that subject.
But somehow, some way we need to get away from paper driven processes. And the only way to do that is by having better ways to collect data and having better ways for the workers to collect data, instead of going through a complex checklist-based form, for example. In a distribution environment, we're seeing third party logistics providers finding this to be a solution that allows them to create flexibility in their automation approach. Because we can use augmented reality to replace for example, lights in an operation - you don't need to go through the expensive process of installing lights. Instead, you can configure lights with our platform and put a few barcodes on a shelf and produce lights. So if you want to change the lights, or if you want to add more of them, it's all done through data and a few bar codes. That flexibility is a huge factor for small to mid-sized companies, as well as for 3PLs who don't have the ability to make long term investments in heavy fixed automation. So part of our part of our value proposition to our customers that's really kind of landing very well is the idea that you have control, you have flexibility. And part of the patented platform is not just the ability to use all this data, but it's a configuration engine that allows us to model any business process that you can flowchart. In fact, our tool uses a flowchart to represent the business process. So our customers have control over what their business process looks like and our platform then connects all the dots based on how they've modeled that business process to ensure that the worker has all the data they need at every step in that process. And to ensure that their business systems get all the data that they need at every step of that process. And hopefully in a way that reduces the friction for that frontline worker. And so when you when you talk about customization across multiple industry verticals, the answer is that we designed the platform from the ground-up to support that, because we knew, again, based on my lengthy background and my team's lengthy background, it was not something where it was a one-size-fits all solution. Every company needs to be able to control their process. And in my belief, I think it's critical that that process be as flexible as possible, that we can create Software Defined automation, because I also believe that there's an issue right now with the economic sustainability of a lot of logistics operations. And so that flexibility is a critical factor towards economic sustainability. If you make an investment once, ideally, you want to be able to maintain the usage of that investment if the market changes directions, by simply repurposing or, you know, reconfiguring rather than having to go and scrap heavy, expensive fixed automation that is no longer the right solution for your business. So that's where we're trying to change people's viewpoint about automation, not solely about bolts and a floor and conveyors and steel moving boxes, but rather looking at it differently, and saying how can we achieve the same results, but maybe not have everything bolted the floor, so that when things change, I can respond and react in a more effective way and a more cost effective way?
 
Abdul Montaqim, Editor of Robotics and Automation
Okay, let's tackle this this digital supply chain term, then as far as I understand from what supply chain is just for, I like to try and make things accessible to people who are not industry experts like yourself, you know, new readers and new listeners. So supply chain is complete cycle or overview of the entire supply chain, from raw materials through manufacturing, through logistics, warehousing, to the delivery to the end customer and the returns and everything - all the supplies supply chain, that is the supply chain. And I take note of the fact that you said about a lot of warehouses, and a lot of companies probably use still use paper-based organizational methods. And that is a very interesting but not really that surprising. I think I read statistics that the majority of warehouses are still sort of not automated, to any great degree. I imagined the larger ones, quite well automated and very into this digital supply chain concept. But can you explain what “digital supply chain” means and how your company and services fit into this whole trend towards digital supply chains?
 
Seth Patin, Founder and CEO of LogistiVIEW
Absolutely. And you’re right. Digital supply chain is a very big topic, it can be a very complex and sometimes very confusing topic, simply because there's a lot of ways and a lot of directions that a company can go. Many large organizations, even mid-sized organizations have what they call a “digital transformation strategy.” Sometimes that is a whole committee of people who spend a substantial amount of effort, sometimes it's their entire job, to find the places in their operations where they can digitally transform their business to leverage technology such as ours. I think digital transformation is an interesting concept. However, because a lot of times when you talk, when you hear people talk about it, the number one place we talk about transforming the business digitally is actually not in the supply chain, but rather in commerce management and in customer experience. And so a lot of times we put a lot of energy into the front end of business applications that a customer perhaps might be using or interacting with, or an app on a phone. If you're a B2B or if you're a B2C company, and you're trying to build your brand and reduce friction with your customers, then the idea is to build an app that has very, very simplified, easy to use solutions, so that your customers can buy more and get their products more efficiently. Obviously the largest companies in the world, the Amazons of the world have put extensive efforts into that kind of task. And that digitization is a concept that has to really permeate the entire company to achieve its maximum potential. And trying to figure out where to start, I think you really have to follow where your biggest pain points are and certainly every company is going to be a little different from a supply chain perspective. That may be that you have difficulty interfacing with your suppliers, placing orders, tracking your purchase orders and inbound raw materials, or if you’re a distributor, your inbound finished goods. And that may that may require a new system to manage it all. Many companies have that process procurement and purchase order management built into any ERP application. The same is true of sales orders. And you know, and inventory transfers, many times that type of business process is optimized and digitized in a large scale enterprise resource planning or the ERP system. What I find most companies miss though, is not the application of the large ERP platform - I mean what percentage of the world is running SAP, or a Microsoft or an Oracle or something like that? A substantial percentage particularly as you mentioned earlier large companies are already using technologies like that. And many mid-sized companies and smaller companies are also using technologies like that.

But what I'm observing is that those types of technologies often miss or skip one substantial component of digitization. And that is the frontline workforce. It's one thing to say my Amazon app, for example, makes my order experience just incredibly easy. But that same person who just ordered an app and ordered something on the Amazon app, and thought it was a fantastic experience is now the one walking into the warehouse as your worker, or the manufacturing plant as your worker and picking up a device that might be 15 years old or logging into a green screen terminal that might be 25 years old. And that's that differentiation, that separation between what people experience in their personal life, what we call “consumer technology”, and then what they subsequently experience in their work life, the workforce technology, I find that gap to be the most substantial, the most visible difference. And that's one of the reasons why we have entered into this space is because digitization of the supply chain, many companies are already doing that to a very substantial level in terms of information management. But the last step of getting that information into the hands of workers who are responsible for actually executing your digital transformation, or the strategy that's defined by your digital transformation, getting that data into their hands in a way that allows them to use it effectively. And then feedback, the expected results of that transformation, the efficient movement of goods, the efficient cost control during the movement or creation, and delivery of those goods. All of that action requires that last mile of digitization, that workforce component, and that’s where LogistiVIEW steps into the supply chain digitization process is to enable the frontline worker to experience the digitization that many other companies are already beginning to integrate into the rest of their operations.
 
Abdul Montaqim, Editor of Robotics and Automation
But I wanted to ask you about last mile delivery. Actually, I'll do that in a minute. But I was wondering if you could briefly sort of describe or give an overview of the partnership you have with Fetch Robotics, which is a company that manufactures warehouse robot, probably more than one, actually. But tell us a little bit about that please.
 
Seth Patin, Founder and CEO of LogistiVIEW
Yes, that's our partnership with Fetch was just recently announced at the Augmented World Expo in the end of May. And we're really excited about what's possible there. Because I think I mentioned earlier that I believe that automation needs to be unbolted from the floor, I believe that it needs to be flexible. And what we're doing with Fetch is leveraging their industry-leading autonomous robotics platform. And, their vision for a platform of robots that allow for not just movement of one or two orders and a couple of totes, but rather a platform that allows for the movement of everything from a small cart to a full palette. And then looking at the capabilities that are potentially delivered, if you optimize the movement of those robots and how they can interact with people. I recently did a presentation at Augmented World Expo about my belief that the new workforce, the digital workforce, it's bigger than just people. And people are still a critical component of it. In fact, I believe that there's no way robots achieve their full potential in the next 15 years without technology that connects people into that process to help the robots achieve that efficiency and ROI. But what I believe is critical is for robots to achieve their full potential, we need to be able to create robot assisted processes, not that replace people but rather that replace fixed conveyors and fixed automation that's bolted to the floor. If we can build a solution that leverages the capabilities of autonomous robots, and then optimizes the way in which people interact with those robots, it allows us to build a platform that's completely flexible. And it can be orchestrated by artificial intelligence to respond and adapt to changes in business, in changes in demand, changes in supply. And you have the ability then, to increase the complexity and scale of robot assisted processes to be able to match or exceed that of incredibly expensive, incredibly complicated fixed automation. And by doing that, it gives companies better ability to adapt, better ability to invest money with confidence, that even if the business changes, even if their customers change their behaviors, even if the market drops unexpectedly or something, that you have the ability to react without having to scrap a substantial amount of investment. And our customers are talking a lot about their fears of investing in technology that might be obsolete, or might be irrelevant. We're trying to build platforms that allow them to invest in robots that can be moved and reconfigured into workforce solutions that can be easily adjusted and reconfigured to react to the changing needs of the market. So that's really where we're going with Fetch. We believe that Fetch has a great platform on which we can integrate into ours and deliver that flexibility to the market and flexible automation to the market.
 
Abdul Montaqim, Editor of Robotics and Automation
Yeah, find those warehouse robots, like the ones Fetch is manufacturing and supplying a very interesting, very fascinating technology. And both in terms of as a technology, I find it interesting, but also as a market opportunity. They're just such a huge, it just seems like such a huge opportunity there. First of all, as we said, there are a lot of warehouse that don't have any sort of automation or technology to speak of, maybe because conveyors are very expensive or too expensive for them to install? And then you look at the conveyor market itself, which, you know, some people are kind of, you know, now they've got an option, an alternative, which is robots, which don't require the fixed infrastructure that you're talking about. So it is a really interesting opportunity, and a really interesting market to watch. But even before or rather even beyond that. The last mile delivery question that some people are dealing with now I went to an event about logistics for ecommerce recently, and they were sort of discussing this question. How do you deal with the last mile - the trip from maybe the warehouse to the customer's home or business address, and deliver the item? And they were talking about autonomous vehicles as well driving vans and things like that. All of which will require, you know, as we talked about digital supply chains and digital technologies to manage artificial intelligence and so on. What can you what kind of comments or observations do you have about the that last mile part because that's the one that interests me, because it's very complex journey, it can be a very complex journey, compared to say, for example, what's happening inside the warehouse because it's very controlled, and well organized environment. And even long journeys, you've got long roads and motorways and things like that. So it's a faster cover, you cover a lot more ground, and therefore can be quite cheap. But the last mile is relatively expensive, I don't know if I've got that right. But what your devices or this part of the supply chain, if you'd like?
 
Seth Patin, Founder and CEO of LogistiVIEW
Yeah, I think your hunch that the last mile is the most expensive is very accurate. In fact, it's one of the, I would argue right now , it's the largest battleground in ecommerce. You take a look at, particularly in the United States, where Walmart and Amazon are driving towards you one day, or even sometimes even same day deliveries, that type of expectation drives incredible complexity, and incredible volume and scale into the last mile problem. And so today, we have a system that many fear to be both ecologically and economically unsustainable. The cost of two day, or one day or same day delivery is substantial. And so that's why companies are looking at options like drones, or autonomous delivery vehicles. I think that's going to be there's going to be some places where drones or autonomous delivery vehicles can be, can certainly be solutions. I think in densely populated areas where there's a degree of predictability to, you know, to the delivery and the pickup of goods, what we're going to see a centralization of delivery of packages to package hubs and things like that. Amazon's already placing that type of technology into large apartment complexes and things like that. Certainly, you know, for B2B type of applications in the United States, one of the things that many folks are talking about right now, is actually just piloted by UPS and Wake Med Hospital System here in the Raleigh area, actually, in Wake County, is the idea of delivering mission critical supplies between hospital locations via drone. All these are just pilots, however, because the problem of solving that issue, to your point earlier, at the scale and variety of and complexity of the unpredictability of paths outside of the four walls. What if you have weather, what if you have road construction? A lot of those problems are still yet to be solved. There’s not a full solution for them yet. I think we're seeing a lot of advances in autonomous vehicle technology that have the potential to change that in the next couple years. But I think in the in the near term, the number one thing that companies are going to need to do for last mile is to optimize routing, which a lot of solutions already are trying to solve that problem. And then also improve the speed with which every stop can take place. And I do see a lot of the idea of having to record 12 different package drop offs in a, you know, seven or eight tap and button press process. Those are places where I think that, you know, that's low hanging fruit for optimization, how can we make the confirmation process as simple as possible? And how can we enable the drivers to find all the necessary packages for a stop inside their truck more quickly? How can we load the trucks more predictably, so that there's you know, there's less art and more science in the process? I think that's the next step for last mile delivery, is optimizing, routing, loading and unloading procedures to make it so that people can deliver more faster. And then of course, there's the societal question of, do we really need same day delivery? Or can we deal with it in a day or two days? That arms race, so to speak to same day delivery may eventually get waylaid by regulation, because of the ecological and economic cost of it.
 
Abdul Montaqim, Editor of Robotics and Automation
That's very interesting. I just think that people will, there will be a portion of the market that will want same day delivery, it just seems natural. Whether the suppliers can achieve that the sellers can achieve that will be interesting to see. Okay, one more question about the future, I suppose. What do you see panning out for your company? What are your plans and, and ideas?
 
Seth Patin, Founder and CEO of LogistiVIEW
Well, for the near term future, I see companies becoming more aware of the problems that they have with respect to sustainability of their workforce, with respect to accuracy problems, or efficiency problems causing predictability issues or forecasting issues in their business and looking to digitalization of their workforce as a solution to that problem. Particularly as it pertains to things like accuracy. It's one thing to record transactions, it's something entirely different to record transactions with a degree of accuracy, and to drive instructions that optimize accuracy. And so many of the technologies in the market today are all about tracking what a person has done. And what LogistiVIEW is looking to do is to help companies not just figure about what a person has done, but help them understand how it was done. And then understand what behaviors can be reinforced to ensure that it continues to be done in in the best way possible. That type of transformation that is, you know, that is the digital transformation of the workforce. I believe that's where we're going to be driving a lot of opportunity in the near-term future to help companies understand and answer those questions more accurately. In the long term, more down the line, I believe that there's a an inevitable transition in generational technology. If you take a look back in the late 80s, it started off with handheld devices, when we went from printed sheets, and or green screens to handheld devices. That was first generation of mobility. Then in the early 2000s, we started having things like voice terminals. And so it was a change in input technology that drove again an opportunity to be hands-free. And there was a substantial degree of value that comes with the that hand-free capability. And what we're seeing now is a transition from volume and low SKU count to complete personalization and massive SKU proliferation. And at that point, the technology that enables that type of commerce, that type of commerce structure needs to be different. It needs to be capable of not just recording transactions, it needs to be capable of orchestrating those transactions, making sure that the worker is doing all the things that need to be done to ensure that every bit of personalization that the customer requires and requests is actually being performed. And that is where I think as retail transforms more from big box centralized type of experiences, to what I call “experiential retail”, the idea that a retail store will eventually not be the place where you buy or where you take the product home, but merely a place where you experience the brand. And you learn about the brands’ products. And then you tell the brand representative at that store, I would like to purchase this and they say okay, that's fantastic, it'll be at your front door in two hours. That type of model is what's coming. It’s the future. Experiential retail is the future.

​Because the next generation of consumers wants customization, they want personalization, they want to be able to have products that are somewhat unique to them. And there's no way a retail store, any single retail store, will be able to hold that level of variety, it'll have to be done at a broader distribution level. That's where this type of technology I think will be critical to help companies react and respond in that type of environment. That's where LogistiVIEW is trying to push our technology in the future, not just with humans, but also by introducing the concept of robotic system processes to assist and help manage that SKU diversity in that complexity that's inherently coming to retail. I think perhaps the other thing that would be worth talking about is how workforce or how the workforce is responding to smart glasses. One of the things that a lot of companies ask us is whether or not smart glasses are going to make somebody sick or cause vision problems, or things like that. And a lot of companies I think have misconceptions based on perhaps, the decisions that were made early on, in some of the earliest devices on the market around how a person sees the display, and how that sometimes can allow them to interact, either positively or negatively with it. And so one of the things that we definitely focus on heavily is solving problems that allow workforce to be comfortable and enjoy wearing the devicesin a way that is ergonomically comfortable to their eye that solves hygiene problems.  Another common question is, can the devices be kept hygienic? And the answer is yes, of course, this is something that has been solved by many companies. So that's one place where a lot of folks have misunderstandings or misconceptions about the idea that the devices are impossible to deploy at scale. And that is something that we've we definitely have been able to solve problems like that and find a solution that allows companies to have devices that work across multiple shifts and for folks with eye correction, for example, can still use smart glasses. Or folks who are right or left eye dominant can use smart glasses. We find that, that that type of that type of education is something that is helpful for end users to understand that there's lots of options. It's not just one size fits all.
 
Abdul Montaqim, Editor of Robotics and Automation
Okay, so thank you very much indeed.