ROS Goss

2025 Wrapped, 2026 Loaded, and the Holiday Sweaters No One Asked For

• Dwight & Company • Season 1 • Episode 10

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 53:07

2025. Well, that was really something.

From AI hype cycles to real-world deployments, from pilot purgatory to systems that actually shipped, 2025 gave the robotics and automation industry plenty to talk about.

Join Mandy Dwight, Forest Lee, and Catherine O’Connor for a year-end ROS Goss recap as they break down the trends that truly shaped the industry this year. What moved the needle, what fell flat, and what lessons founders, operators, and marketers are carrying into the next chapter.

And what’s on deck for 2026? We asked some of the smartest voices in the industry to weigh in. Expect predictions, hot takes, and hard-earned insights from Jeff Burnstein of A3, Greg Baer of MHI, Guy Courtin of Tecsys, Matt Bush of KPI, Brent Barcey of DWFritz Automation, and Gemma Ross of OSARO on where robotics and automation are headed next.

Add in a few holiday sweaters, a Boston backdrop, and some honest industry talk, and you have a fitting send-off to 2025 and a sneak peak at what is coming in 2026.

SPEAKER_09

Hi everyone, I'm Mandy Dwight, founder, CEO of Dwight and Company. We are a specialized sales and marketing company specifically for automation and robotics. It's the end of the year. It is November as we're sitting here. I'm joined by my fantastic colleagues here at Dwight Co. Forrest Lee, who is our head of brand strategy and marketing. And also Katie, who is our head of digital content. So Katherine O'Connor, excuse me. So end of the year. End of the year. This is the last episode that we're doing for this year. So you know, it was the launch of Roscos this year. So this will be the final episode of the year. A lot has happened in 2025. So what we decided to do is get together and kind of talk about, you know, what's happened over the year, talk about, you know, in the year in automation and robotics, talk about the year at Dwight Co., you know, things that we've done that we got excited about, working with customers and clients. Um, but also looking at 2026. And we had some fantastic industry colleagues that actually sent us videos and made comments on our LinkedIn, things that they wanted to talk about for 2026. So we'll be looking at those together today. Um, first of all, uh thank you so much to the Waverly here in Charlestown Mass who for letting us just come in and say, hey, can we sit at that table and do a random podcast about robots today? Um, also, you know, it is the end of the year that's our holiday celebration. We are wearing our our holiday sweaters today. So, you know, um, thank you to to Trove on uh Tremont Street in the south end of Boston, which you had a sweat a sweatshirt there that I did not know I needed until I saw it. So thank you for that.

SPEAKER_08

Um you gotta show the Dunkin' Donuts.

SPEAKER_07

Oh yeah, you can't see it.

SPEAKER_09

There we go. This is this is the reason why. Like, yes, it's a lobster on a sweatshirt, but also there is a Dunkin' Donuts, which uh don't judge, I don't usually go to Dunkin' Donuts, but you know, here it is on the on the shirt. It's a very good thing.

SPEAKER_06

I'm pretty sure that lobster is in the new AI Coca-Cola Christmas ad.

SPEAKER_09

Is he really?

unknown

No.

SPEAKER_09

He could be.

SPEAKER_06

He's actually more well drawn and animated than most of the stuff in that ad. Yeah. Kind of a disaster.

SPEAKER_09

Yeah, well, this is a local artist. This is actually an artist called uh Cotton and Blue, and she's gonna be at the SOA Market, I'm told. So go down to the SOA market and uh pick up your own lobster holding uh a Dunkin' Donuts uh cup sweatshirt. So so you know, a lot's happened this year. So we got together this week and we kind of talked about 2025, and you know, we had some some things that really you know came out very strong. Um there's been some trends and some things that have really taken us kind of by surprise this year. Um, you know, and I don't know. So what did you guys think? Like so what did you think was interesting this year?

SPEAKER_08

Kick it off for us.

SPEAKER_06

I don't think we we rehearsed that question.

Humanoids: Hype, Reality, And Risk

SPEAKER_09

Well you know, well we talked about what was interesting, the fact that, well, uh when you see the 2026 clips that came in, um everybody said something about AI. Everybody said something about humanoids. So first of all, I'll kick it off, right? Humanoids. Yes. Like everybody just mic drop, humanoids. So everybody's talking about humanoids, almost every VC has a humanoid in their portfolio. Yeah uh what surprised you uh about about them this year?

SPEAKER_08

I will give it to them that their marketing is spot on. Because if you're not in the industry, this is a very real thing. You know, to have my parents who are, you know, 60 plus talking about what is a humanoid, I think that's you know, really great on them to have, you know, people outside the industry, people of different generations talking about it. However, if you're in our suit shoes, you know that you know my 2026 word of the year is allegedly um allegedly they can do all these things. But I just we're not seeing it happen yet. And I just think that you know this is where the VC funding is going, and there's a lot of disagreement with that. So what do you guys think?

SPEAKER_06

No, I I think that is 100% correct. It's they are doing a phenomenal job of selling the dream of not just humanoid, but sort of household robotics generally, right? So one of the other things we're seeing this year is is the unfortunate sort of slow motion collapse of iRobot, right? Uh yeah. Like sort of Boston's like uh used to be the cause celeb in in consumer robotics.

SPEAKER_09

It's on the wall in the airport.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, like and and the Roomba is I mean, it was on uh Aaron Prater's list of the top ten most important robots, I think, right? Um so and and and you know, part of the promise of iRobot was consumer robots, robots that can do these household tasks and things like that. And people got super excited about it, similar to how we're seeing this excitement for humanoids in in consumer households building up. And really, if you have any expertise in robotics, you look at the advertisement, the marketing for, especially the consumer applications of robot of these humanoids, and you're like, I don't know about this. This seems far-fetched at best. And also, are people gonna want to pay as much as they're gonna cost? Like, how is this gonna work? So they're they're doing a really good job of selling the dream.

SPEAKER_08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06

But is it vapor or is it reality?

SPEAKER_08

And you know, we were talking about two, I forget which robot or humanoid it was, um, but the New York Times did the video on it. Who was that?

SPEAKER_06

I think it was the Wall Street Journal did the video on um the NEO. Yeah, and I wish I could remember the name of the jerk the journalist because she did a phenomenal job with that video. And the NEO's interesting, and and um the robot report also talked about this on their podcasts. If we can talk about other people's podcasts.

SPEAKER_07

Sure, yeah, please. We welcome them all.

SPEAKER_06

They talked about the NEO, and I actually kind of agree with their take where um this the founder, CEO of One X, he was being he's being pretty clear about what to expect from the NEO, what its capabilities are. Um he might be being a little ambitious about what uh the technology, especially the software part of the technology, is going to be capable of in the near term, but he's being really clear that the majority of the applications in the home are going to be teleoperated to start with. The problem is the marketing, the demo videos and stuff that they show are really overselling its capabilities. And I think unless you're super into robotics and you're super into following like the news about Neo, you might put your$200 down and spend your$20,000 to get into your home and be really surprised with what it can what its capabilities actually are.

SPEAKER_08

Then also, are you okay with a stranger tele oping into your home? That's a hot no. That's a hot no everything. No. Does it turn off at night?

SPEAKER_09

That's also probably very I'm skeptical. So skeptical.

SPEAKER_06

I do I you both know that I am also very skeptical of humanoids generally, and that I have a lot of reservations about their capabilities uh in in any venue and that and whether they're an appropriate technology for almost any application. To be clear, I think humanoids are pretty unnecessary, especially the bottom half.

SPEAKER_07

Yeah.

AI Fatigue And Misuse In Marketing

SPEAKER_06

Um but uh OneX has been really clear that they have really strict software boundaries about what a teleoperator is going to be able to do. And so even if a teleoperator wanted to, they would be bam barred by the software in the in the NEO from doing certain things. So you can tell it you can you can say you're not allowed to go in this room, and the robot physically just won't be able to. Yeah. Um you know, any time a teleoperator comes in, it's going to be by invitation of the user, of the owner of the robot. So they're gonna have to say, hey, during these hours, I want you to perform these tasks. And then they'll know that a teleoperator is going to be operating it or maybe operating it during that time. But that's also a time when you're like, okay, I need to have pants on when I go into the kitchen.

SPEAKER_08

So new roommate.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, so I don't I want to be f I want to be fair to 1X. I think they are overselling the the the Neo like crazy.

SPEAKER_07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06

But they are being very clear about what its capabilities are and what the what you're going to have to accept if you invite one into your home.

SPEAKER_09

And, you know, one of the other things that we did talk about when we got together this week was generative AI. And you both had, I don't know, a lot of thoughts on generative AI and where that's going. Like it it is I I was walking the other day and I think I heard the way word AI about five times in a half hour walk just with people that I didn't know just kind of walking around the streets here in Boston.

SPEAKER_06

The fact that you hear it that much kind of makes the initial point, which is we've heard the term AI so much over the last two years, and especially this year.

SPEAKER_09

Like desensitized.

SPEAKER_06

Not only desensitized, it's become kind of meaningless. It's it's almost more of a marketing term, not to disparage our profession, but like I especially, having worked in like corporate like level marketing for such a long time, have a lot of words that I use that don't actually have meaning. They only mean something to be other people who are in marketing.

SPEAKER_08

Well, Forrest, you brought up a good point. I just the other day, you said um, you know, companies that don't even have a reason to be using AI are saying, I have AI now.

SPEAKER_07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08

And you know, it helps their stock price go up because people are obsessed with that word and the idea of what can come out of it, but there are companies like I don't know if my bank needs AI.

SPEAKER_06

No.

SPEAKER_09

Well, I mean, it is to help people sell more. Dwight Co has AI. I'm totally kidding. I'm totally kidding.

SPEAKER_06

If any investors are listening to this, we are an AI first agency. Uh please you can send checks to my address, which is No, I think that's that's a yeah, absolutely, that's a good point. It's it's it's a it's become something that that a CEO can say.

SPEAKER_07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06

Uh and it will attract investment dollars, whether it's relevant to the business or not. Like our, you know, uh housekeeping business has AI now, like and now suddenly they're a unicorn. It's wild. Well, no, I'm I'm kidding.

SPEAKER_08

But like, really tell me more.

SPEAKER_06

Housekeeping. Yeah, they send you a picture of a really clean-looking guy. But it's also I mean, we're starting to see um high-level misapplications of generative AI. So I had mentioned, I think, before we started recording the Coca-Cola Christmas ad. Oh, yeah. They're getting pretty they're pretty getting pretty thoroughly dragged for it, and I would say deservedly so. They spent a huge amount of time, but they did not they reduced headcount in their creative areas, like creative team, but they didn't they used more or less the same number of people and the same level of effort. It probably cost them less. But it's a bad ad. Yeah. It's weirdly visually inconsistent. It's got a like, and the fact that they I mean, this is a professional ad from Coca-Cola, whose holiday ads are stuff of legend, right? These are important cultural touchstones, Coca-Cola Christmas ads. And this one, like, if you watch carefully the trucks when they're going by, some of the wheels aren't turning. Oh wow. The the texture on some of the cute animals in there, the f their texture on their fur is really inconsistent and occasionally weird. Um, there's a sloth that turns its head like uh Linda Blair and the Exorcist. Like it is and like they were like, yeah, this is that ad, actually. It's just unsettling. It's uncanny valley stuff, and it's like they decided they put so much time and effort into it, and this was the best they could do. It's Coca-Cola, right? So it's not like some mom and pop like burrito store did their AI ad and they were like, yeah, this is fine. But it's Coca-Cola. It's the biggest consumer brand in the world outside of like Apple, right? But that's crazy to me that they would think that it was an acceptable thing. And so I think we're starting to see I think these are maybe leading indicators of the bubble bursting. Yeah. I've talked for a long time.

White-Glove Service As A Differentiator

SPEAKER_09

No, I mean, and then and then with that too, one other thing that we were talking a little bit about is the space continues to be saturated. There's a ton of robotics companies, a ton of, you know, name your flavor, you know, AMR, robotic arm. And we talked a little bit about the fact that the White Love service has come back and really set people apart. As to be, you know, you can't just provide a thing anymore. You have to provide the value along with that.

SPEAKER_08

I think it's um, I think it's a shift of more B2C mindset where you're providing that personalization, the customization, just from beginning to end. Whatever you need, you're investing in us as a company, and we're gonna be with you for life. And I think that's what's setting companies apart, people who do have that mentality, um, and I think their customers see it.

SPEAKER_06

Absolutely. And I think it's a continuation, the fact that we're seeing it in automation now is the continuation of a trend that's been happening in sort of B2B more generally. So I've been, I left uh consumer marketing about 10 years ago to go to B2B tech, primarily robotics automation, but also just sort of general tech, health tech, things like that. And when I started with uh more general tech, we had clients like Samsung and Abbott Medical and H and Hewlett-Packard, WordPress, and all of them were really starting to move in that that direction of personalization, high customization, even for B2B sales. And so we're it's just what we're seeing in automation uh is is a continuation of that trend, I think, and it's really, really important because it is just going to be more and more expected as we as we go forward.

SPEAKER_08

I think that's a good point. It's expected now. And I think, you know, uh maybe this isn't one of our predictions, maybe this is just something that we talked about too. Um but just the shift in mentality of when you order something now, it's it's just you expect it in two days. Yes. And if you don't, if you don't get it, you're like, where's my order? I actually called someone today and I was like, Wow, you picked up the phone for this. Wild.

SPEAKER_06

What kind of zenial are you?

SPEAKER_08

A zelenia who likes her things fast.

SPEAKER_06

I was willing to make a phone call.

SPEAKER_08

That's like a total blend of those two generations. And guess what? I went downstairs and it was on my doorstep.

SPEAKER_06

Well, you call them again, you're like, I expect you to send me a photograph of it on my doorstep.

SPEAKER_08

Give me the link at least. But you know what? It's a I expected it. And I think it's my mentality when I buy things now, and I'm sure, you know, when you're a company making a very, very large purchase, you expect the same thing. Maybe not in delivery time, but just you know, the the uh customization and just the white glove service. I think it's really important.

SPEAKER_06

I think you actually make a really super important point there uh as well, which is that Amazon is the sort of guilty party here, but they have they have created an expectation of instantaneous uh gratification that I think is is reasonable and good for consumer stuff, right? If you order a package, you want it twenty-four hours. That I don't think is uh potentially a bad thing. But the maybe the dark side of this expectation of customization, personalization, white glove service is that you now have potentially, and actually I've I've seen this on the B2B side of things, um, you have enterprises going to other enterprises and saying, I have this very complex need. I need to automate this um this uh I don't know, battery cell assembly line soup to nuts. It's a greenfield facility, we're building it from scratch. And you know, we need it live in, you know, six months. Yeah. Right? And then and and you know, that's crazy.

SPEAKER_08

But it's how fast can you give it to me?

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, how fast can you give it to me? And so this expectation of speed and quality is maybe a little un unreasonable. Maybe it's maybe we're seeing uh sort of a dark side of that, that expectation of of uh white glove surface, I guess.

SPEAKER_09

What's a time of extremes? I mean we went from you know the 2020 pandemic era to we understood that we were waiting multiple days for just a couple rolls of toilet paper to, you know, now we're at the extreme, like, hey, is it here yet? Is it here yet?

Startup Struggles, Survival, And Optimism

SPEAKER_06

You know, this I an anecdote occurred to me the other night. I don't remember who we were talking to or talking about, but uh we were we were discussing um automation and logistics. And I think we might have been previewing one of the videos where someone talks about um shelf climbing robots. Oh, Matt Bush was a lot of people. Um and it reminded me of back in 2020, I was working for an e-commerce company uh during the shipping crisis. Everyone will remember the container ships just floating off anchor outside of the port of Los Angeles and empty containers stacking up the port. There weren't truckers available, you couldn't get stuff to warehouses, things were and every anchorage was full, like you could look at satellite photos and see some double-digit percentage of every container ship in the world just floating off of Los Angeles. It was crazy. And we literally had a couple of our supply chain guys who would go out on speedboats and find the container ship that our containers were on so that then we could try and like pull strings to get that ship in earlier to get that container offloaded. And so we had guys out there bird dogging these huge container ships in like a zodiac. But the pictures that they would send us were crazy. And so there are elements of logistics that are not subject to automation, right? But automation can potentially help um offset the things that cause those kinds of bottlenecks in the future. I don't really have a point here.

SPEAKER_09

I just they should have sent out the Codzilla.

SPEAKER_06

They should have sent out the Codzilla. He would have had to send them all the way around through the Panama Panama Canal.

SPEAKER_08

Um We'll put a picture of that with the Codzilla.

SPEAKER_06

But I think when we're when we're talking about the importance a lot of our predictions from our friends are about logistics automation, about warehouse automation, about um and and and you were just talking about that that instant gratification, that time between order and receipt. That's super, super important. And we're entering an era of global trade being further disrupted by trade policy and politics, um, potentially further disrupted by technology. And so I think it's important as we automate the things that are automatable, which is, you know, inside the warehouse dock-to-dock automation is totally achievable. But there are things that are n maybe never going to be under our control. And so, but we need to think about as we begin to automate certain stuff, how does the automation affect what's outside of the warehouse, for instance, right? So, how can automation also speed up or simplify the movement of of trucks or the movement of ships? Um again, I do not have an answer to this, um, but it's going to be an interesting problem for the next few years as we see. sort of disruption in this area continue.

SPEAKER_09

Yeah, exactly. And speaking of disruptions, you know, 2025 was a difficult year for a lot of companies. Especially startups. Uh and I feel, you know, as as a startup person, I feel that deeply. Um I recently saw a s a sli a colleague sent me this slide with, you know, all these logos of people that went out of business this year. And I said, great slide, except it's missing about 30 companies.

SPEAKER_06

But you immediately notice the companies that are missing from because there's just so many.

SPEAKER_09

And it's and it's something that I don't I don't want to talk about specific companies because I you know I feel I feel it deeply as somebody that's lived through through that. But it's hard. It is so hard. And you know I think about these people that had this idea, had this dream, put this company together, raise money, which is the most ridiculous hard thing to do, and just didn't make it. But it's it's hard and I think some of the economic uncertainty has has really played into that quite a bit.

SPEAKER_08

Yeah it was a hard year. And it it takes me back to um back to January in the A3 business forum. Oh January I love that show by the way Economist. Yep. Thank you A3. We love you. A3 But The Economist came on and he's I think if I'm remembering correctly he was just like this you're not going to like to hear this news everyone. But dark times are coming. It's like we have the the tariffs on the way just just overall economic uncertainty and it is going to hit home. So and we saw that this year. So it's it's been a hard year.

SPEAKER_06

And and we only saw the very beginning of it. It's going to be it's going to be a much longer road than it has already been.

SPEAKER_09

I'm glad I ordered a drink thanks for this guy.

SPEAKER_06

We're not going to go gloom and doom but yes I I want to add a note of of like an uplifting note onto this conversation. Please do please which is every time a startup dies that just releases the most ambitious people from that startup to start five more startups.

SPEAKER_07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06

And you know for every one for every hundred that die you're going to have one that changes the world.

SPEAKER_07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06

Um and that's why people do it. So that's the note of hope and I think that that is well I lived through I was in San Francisco during the dot-com bubble. So I lived through I've lived through this before.

SPEAKER_07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06

Um and I know that there were a lot of people who even during the highest times of the dot com bubble their spirits were being crushed. But then there were other people who were out there who succeeded and did something really, really meaningful, did really cool stuff and changed the world. So we're going to see that again.

One-Word Themes: Chaos, Allegedly, Survival

SPEAKER_09

Yeah. So you know that that's actually a good so we had one more thing that we're going to talk about, but I'm going to go on to the the next topic. I mean we we were going to say the one word that do you remember what that one word that like Oh I remember my one word. What is the mine? What is the one word?

SPEAKER_06

Mine was chaos for the group that defines the year in automation. And it was because of I had I had already mentioned this, but it was because of tariffs, it was because of trade policy, it's because of economic situation. And it's because we are in this weird space where there is huge amounts of opportunity for American especially system integrators and manufacturers and logistics operators but there's also uncertainty that is causing everyone to it's very difficult to figure out where that opportunity is and how to take advantage of it. And so what we're seeing is we're seeing companies that are successful or should be successful not fail but struggle to find their footing even though they've been successful. Um just because things are weird right now. Things are weird and chaotic.

SPEAKER_08

Mine was allegedly allegedly oh I like that allegedly you can do that.

SPEAKER_09

Allegedly we do use that a lot um allegedly so no I I neither of them has seen letter kinny. Yeah. No. We'll we'll have to watch that. But all my word was survival. Oh I like that. I mean technically I I'm a founder of this company and I worried all year about how the economic you know uncertainty that was hitting the automation providers, robotics founders, like how that would affect this business. Yeah. So survival.

SPEAKER_06

I wanna I'm going to you know what I'm going to throw another positive note on before we move on to the next sort of segment uh which if we're talking about one word to describe Dwight and Co. this year I think it's excitement.

SPEAKER_09

Oh yeah. And again we have fun every day.

SPEAKER_06

We we we have fun every day. We love our clients like pretty across pretty much across the board. We have fun with them, not just with each other.

SPEAKER_07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06

I think we do good work and I think um part of the the personalization the White Glove service the sort of upgrading the customer relationship piece that our clients are going to have to do is also going to help them start seeing the value, the genuine value of sophisticated marketing. Yeah. Right? Of what we can provide to them. And I'm not trying to make this a sales pitch but I do think that that manufacturers, logistics operators, systems integrators and robotics companies frankly don't have a super sophisticated understanding of of what marketing can do for their businesses. And I think they're starting to realize that.

SPEAKER_07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06

Uh and so I think watching watching them all learn to walk in that regard this year has been really exciting.

SPEAKER_09

Yeah it's interesting. I mean because we work with the smartest people in in their fields the smartest engineers the best business people right so but marketing sometimes you know it's an afterthought like I am not an engineer. If I go back there and do anything I'll make your situation worse.

SPEAKER_08

I think it's sometimes like a foreign language to them. Absolutely where engineering is a foreign language to me. Oh that's a great way to put it that's where we can compliment each other you know and I think that brings us to what comes in 2026.

SPEAKER_07

Yes.

2026 Predictions: Macros, Tariffs, Caution

SPEAKER_09

So I put a call out on LinkedIn. We got some responses which were so so good.

SPEAKER_05

Hello everybody my name is Guy Cortel I'm the vice president of industry and global alliances here at Texas. As we approach 2026 there are three areas of focus that I will have as we get into the new calendar year. The first is around macroeconomic disruptions. As of this recording the US government remains in a shutdown and we already are starting to see impacts of this on things such as air travel. But we also have tariffs that remain hanging over our heads in a global scale. As we approach 2026 and get into 2026 these issues hopefully the government shutdown will have ended but the things such as tariffs will continue. I think this will continue to put confusion in the market where we'll see companies holding back on cash, holding back on investments and really taking a wait and see approach when it comes to many types of strategic moves forward.

SPEAKER_09

Interesting take from our our friend Guy Cortana over at Texas not the state the company so what do you guys think?

SPEAKER_06

I had a lot of thoughts about this one and basically I think Guy's of course pretty spot on you know I think he makes a really important point about so this the shutdown has ended.

SPEAKER_09

Yeah which is which is and that was just a last week video from last week.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah that's great news but the tariffs are ongoing it's looking like the Supreme Court is going to to declare those illegal but even so you know that that decision will cause a certain amount of chaos and the fact is is that um the administration still has a lot of leeway in how they can manage international trade and that's going to have knock-on effects. In addition we're going to continue to see I suspect some some disruption uh in things like interest rates, inflation, um supply chain disruption just as knock-on effects from the tariffs, things like that. And we have the midterms coming up next year, which is going to cause further uncertainty regardless of what you hope happens or what does happen, it's going to have it's going to cause some uncertainty right and so people are going to continue conserving cash. Investment is going to continue to be a little bit slow and especially for this industry I think what that means is lower investment means fewer startups. Yeah. Startups fuel innovation for this industry. And so if we have one year where there are fewer startups being started, we're going to have ten years of potentially like stunted innovation, right? And so this is I think Key is making a really important point. I I I I'm sounding more pessimistic than I am about it, but like this is something that could happen, right? Is we may start to see um a slowdown in innovation at a time when real innovation, not just hype-driven innovation, but real innovation is absolutely critical to sort of figuring out the next step. Because we are at at an inflection point with AI and with different robotic form factors and things like that where there's hype driven stuff but there's also real stuff and we need to continue the momentum of the real stuff.

SPEAKER_08

Well Mandy you brought up a great point listening to this yesterday did I? You did. We wrote it down I'm quite glad. Maybe this is a time for RAS to shine.

SPEAKER_09

Maybe it is a time for RAS, right? I'm hearing that a lot of companies are being very successful with that. So maybe that's the play because people are you know kind of cash poor right now or not cash poor but just being conservative and not outlaying big um I mean Eric Hardy from Zebra wrote in um on our on the LinkedIn post and he said you know regarding spend is it greenfield versus brownfield you know 3PL versus do it yourself you know will that change some things? And I mean you might try to work with what you've got. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah and and yeah if I remember correctly Eric was just on a the robot reports podcast with one of his clients and they were talking about how 3pls especially are they're they are uh they don't have a lot of capital available a lot of time. So the RAS model works really well. And then we've also talked to uh folks like our friends at Approach Automation.

SPEAKER_07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06

And so what we're starting to see is that there are types of robotics that the RAS model works super super well for, right? So service robotics, I think was the term you used. Yeah. Um appears to be where the RAS model works super, super well. And we've worked at companies where the RAS model didn't really connect.

SPEAKER_07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06

And so I think it's just because it was being misapplied to the wrong type of automation. So yeah I think you made a really good point there.

SPEAKER_09

Yeah. Moving on we got uh Greg Bear sent us a clip uh of Greg Bear from MHI.

SPEAKER_00

My prediction for 2026 well I believe that uh AI and autonomous decision making are going to become more of the norm and less of the nice to have. And I also think that we're going to see more and more installs of ACRs and uh bin to person technologies and robotics. And uh you can also see all these technologies coming up in April at uh modex 2026 in Atlanta. So I uh look forward to seeing you and your team there. Thanks a lot love the podcast.

SPEAKER_07

Thanks Greg.

Hardware, ACR, And Install Timelines

SPEAKER_09

Yeah so Greg we we will see you at Modex we have a lot of our clients to go into Modex and that's like the sales Super Bowl for anybody in robotics and automation for supply chain. But yeah I mean again I mean I think we got so many videos on AI and it's like AI but also this. Yeah. So you know what what are your thoughts guys?

SPEAKER_06

I started the last one. You want me to start this one?

SPEAKER_08

Mandy why don't you take this one?

SPEAKER_09

Yeah sure I mean I want to talk about hardware for a minute. Yeah um because you know Greg brings up an interesting part about you know autonomous case handling and um you know bin to person, you know, ASRS things like that. And we'll see more of that. But you know one thing I I and I think that's true, right? Because that's the long-term play to make your warehouse really just have good flow and and good operations and just know where all of your things are right. The thing with that infrastructure is it takes a long time to put that in.

SPEAKER_08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09

So I think a little bit about you know are are companies like large companies thinking about that right now because if they're not they should be because you know that goes in you you buy it now it goes in in 12 months right maybe more. And and it causes sustained disruption while it's going in yeah so I mean I I think and and then what does that do for the the SMBs? Yeah. You know um is that something that they're thinking about as well.

SPEAKER_08

And how do they keep up?

SPEAKER_09

How do they keep up but I think that is the long term play is to have a really sustainable solution like that in in there. And again, you know, the AI piece, I mean one thing that we've been talking a lot about is how what do you do with it? So I'm just gonna play more videos because we'll get we'll get there with some other ones.

SPEAKER_06

Actually can I say something really quick about so I think uh two things I think um the points that Greg makes are connected. So the idea of autonomous decision making and and more installs of these automated warehouse systems I think is connected right because the more um the more capable of decision making these systems are the easier and less disruptive they become to to install. Obviously there's there's infrastructure physical infrastructure that needs to be put in as well to enable these systems. But um well I mean Zebra does a really good job with essentially trying to put off the shelf technology in place in warehouses so they tr they're trying to put systems in uh especially for I think goods a person without disrupting the infrastructure of the warehouse. Right? And without um requiring specialized equipment. They're using just regular uh roly cards and stuff. I think the more autonomous you make the systems, the easier they are to install. So I think that's a real that's one really important point. The other one is this is the promise of humanoids.

SPEAKER_07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06

Is that you don't need giant infrastructure overhauls in order to put them in place because they'll just slot into the spot that a person would fill. Still skeptical about whether a full humanoid is necessary to do that. There are probably I think other ways to do that that are are simpler from a maintenance perspective and things like that, but we'll talk more about that later.

SPEAKER_09

No, that's perfect. And it actually rolls really nice into what our friend uh Ghee so Guy sent us a couple different predictions so we cut them up a little bit.

SPEAKER_05

The second I'm looking for when it comes specifically to the supply chain in the warehouse is how we're gonna have better orchestration around different types of automation whether it's AMRs, goods to person, ASRS's robotic picking arms, et cetera I think we're gonna continue to push to have a better sense of orchestration or a better ability to orchestrate all this material hand and equipment within the warehouse to truly optimize warehouses to do what they need to do in today's supply chains.

Orchestration Across Warehouse Systems

SPEAKER_09

Like that's a nice segue right because that orchestration piece like years ago they told us all the warehouse everything will be connected and everything will talk together and that was like that was a long time ago or maybe I feel like that was a long time ago but it's it hasn't been.

SPEAKER_08

Yeah. Yeah I feel like we're missing that piece of connection throughout the entire warehouse. And maybe in 2026 we'll see it.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah I think we're starting to see uh systems that have those capabilities I think it's it it's slowed down more by things like vendor lock-in and um you know uh uh hardware exclusivity and things like that where like oh I'm I can only our we our company only buys this brand of robot which means that there's this whole software stack that we just don't have access to or aren't allowed to have access to um and frankly I think that we're we're going to see that start starting to go away. I think that the ability of vendors to enforce lock-in of of uh suppliers to enforce like sort of um you have to use this kind of headw hardware uh rules is gonna become less and less.

SPEAKER_09

Yeah I agree.

SPEAKER_03

So here are some 2026 predictions of that two key ones. So the first is around artificial intelligence uh many people think that we're at the peak of inflated expectations from a hype cycle standpoint. I think we're probably there what people are gonna start figuring out is oh I need some IT infrastructure and some data governance to fuel the AI that I need um as we try to move from dashboards into automated decision making.

SPEAKER_09

You know what I like I mean you know what I like about Matt Bush at KPI is he always finds the most cutting edge automation in robotics. If you call him up and say hey what do you see and what's the coolest it's like Mandy the other day I saw this I mean and and he's watching everything but he's not only watching for the coolness factor he's watching for like the robustness and the reliability which I think not everybody does all the time.

SPEAKER_08

But you know what he he brings a really good point about no one's talking about what safeguards are in place for AI and in these companies um you know we do have a lot of standard groups um for other things in the industry. I have yet to know about one for this but if there is one send it our way we'd love to educate ourselves on it. But how are companies dealing with this? That's what I want to know.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah I think that's a really interesting point. I also would be very curious to know if anyone knows of someone who's working on safety standards for generative AI as a as a sort of generalized application. Because yeah the the governance around it the safety standards around it just isn't there. And I think that's part of what is what slows adoption. And then I think Matt makes a another really important point about it which is the idea that you're gonna see more task oriented AI systems. And so instead of um one piece of software that can that is going to try and do everything, you're gonna see one piece of software that's very, very good at autonomous decision making in a in a constrained environment, right? That that it is it is you know a an AI brain for palletizing or an AI brain for induction or uh AI brain for I don't know CNC uh machine tending or something like that. And those will be incredibly successful machines.

SPEAKER_09

Yeah yeah I agree.

AI Governance And Task-Specific Systems

SPEAKER_05

And finally of course new technologies specifically our good friend AI. I think 2026 there'll be a sort of a reckoning when it comes to AI. Forrest research had a great quote where they say 2026 will see AI replaces Tiara with a hard hat. I completely agree with this. I think going from a lot of loud clamoring from the C-suite about how we all have to be a Genta can use AI, we're actually going to start seeing more practical use cases, more narrow AI use cases where actually from the operational level we'll be able to see true results from smaller, more focused AI rollouts. I want to thank Dwight and company for including me on this and I look forward to 2026 and another great year in supply chain. Thank you.

SPEAKER_09

Alright Tiara with a hard hat I mean that I let's have both mic drop let's have both I like that why can't I bedazzle my hard hat yeah let's make it pink yeah I mean that gives you some good ideas for these headsets for next year. We talked a little bit about tax tax uh excuse me task specific robots that Rohe robot do this, you know, and it does it. And you know specifically we know that people are Working on that, right? Like we're not gonna call names from the largest people out there to the smallest, you know, startups.

SPEAKER_06

We talked about this a little bit the other day, where even our use of of generative AI is is task specific, right? That that none of none of the three of us are using it for just everything. No. You know, it's not it's not like an all-purpose personal assistant. It's you know, I have a chat with uh Chat GPT that's just for recipe planning, and it's wor it works great.

SPEAKER_09

Oh, that's a great idea.

SPEAKER_06

It's awesome, actually. It's like it's especially if you have like allergies or dietary restrictions, but this is not beside the point. The fact is that I've trained it for a specific purpose and made it very successful, but it took time to do that. And if I tried to do and I have other ones that are more specific to work and to to sort of helping me understand certain engineering, deep engineering stuff that I'm not an expert in. Um if I tried to move that engineering stuff over into the recipe chat, it would probably be very weird and confusing and it would be a disaster. And so even within the the the walls of this general purpose AI system, I have to teach it in individual chats to be good at a certain task, and then it's very useful. But I think as soon as you start being like, hey, AI, balance my checkbook and also go grocery shopping for me and also sweep my floors and also, I don't know, uh send my mom a birthday greeting. You're that's just not a good Your mom might get groceries. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Uh it's not a good use case. It's not what people want, it's not how people uh operate yet. Maybe someday it will be. And it's definitely not how warehouses or factories work. Warehouses and factories are task-oriented environments. And so why do you you don't need a general purpose machine. You need something that's gonna be really, really good at a few things and can make decisions within the constraints of those things.

SPEAKER_09

Yeah. So um we have one more prediction that came in from Matt Bush.

SPEAKER_03

Another trend I say on the robotic side. And what are we looking forward to the reliability of the robot climbing over the market? A lot more economical for us in the near future.

SPEAKER_09

Alright, what do you think?

SPEAKER_08

Back to reliability.

SPEAKER_09

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_08

Right? Maybe that's our word for 2026.

SPEAKER_07

Yeah, that's actually a good one.

SPEAKER_09

Reliability. But you know, when we previewed the these clips, you know, Forrest, you had a very different take that I hadn't thought of that was interesting. And I'm gonna tell you what it is because Yeah, please remind me. Let me tell you about how good you were yesterday. Um, so I mean, you know, Matt mentions climbing robots, right? And you said to me, you go, the form factor.

unknown

Yes.

SPEAKER_09

You know, all of a sudden we're looking at innovation and the types of robots that we're seeing.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, I mean, so I I was gonna I was gonna save this for after Jeff's video because he also mentions this.

SPEAKER_09

Oh, do you want to wait?

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, we can't.

SPEAKER_09

Okay, let's wait here.

Reliability And New Mobility Form Factors

SPEAKER_06

Uh I will say that um it was it was that prediction of Matt that reminded me of the anecdote about our old supply chain guys at my old e-commerce company, like bird docking this container ships, right? Because that's that's not something you can automate. But the inside of a container ship, yeah, you probably can, and there's probably a lot of opportunity there, and I'm not aware of anyone who has done it. But um that is an environment in which dynamic mobility would be like being able to climb and walk or roll would be really, really useful, and it's an unstable it's an unstable environment because those container ships are huge and they there's a lot of motion inside them, especially lower down, or higher up rather. Um and so there are there are whole areas of the supply chain that have not been touched by automation, yeah, really.

SPEAKER_09

Yeah, I'd agree with that. So, yeah, that's a nice segue into Jeff Bernstein. So, Jeff, as you know, is the president of A3, a dear friend of ours.

SPEAKER_04

As we think about trends for 2026, I would uh urge you to think about uh uh autonomous mobile bases with collaborative robot arms or other types of arms on them, um as opposed to the discussions that we're having around humanoids, which are walking on two legs that are not safe to be around people yet, uh have limitations in terms of how much they can lift, and uh other limitations that uh autonomous mobile vases don't have. And so more and more people seem to think that in the near term that's the direction we're headed. Autonomous mobile bases with some sort of arm on them or single applications that they can handle efficiently as opposed to multi-purpose humanoids, which uh there's certainly still lots of issues. It's gonna take time.

SPEAKER_08

Did you guys see the video today of Russia unveiling their first humanoids? That didn't go too proud of it.

SPEAKER_06

Oh, and the fact that the the exterior case like explodes when it hits the floor, like they can't even afford good plastic to put around it.

SPEAKER_08

So, I mean, we talked about yesterday everything comes in cycles. And Mandy, speaking of cycles and Baxter.

SPEAKER_09

Well, that's the thing. I mean, it's so interesting. Like, you know, it's it and and of course I liken it to fashion, right? So every every 10 years or so, another decade comes back into fashion, and you're like, oh, I saved that, thank God. Or music, you know, things like that. But it's it I never thought I would see it in robotics and automation, but some of the things that I saw in let's say 2013, 2014, okay, Baxter. But that form factor is somehow back. Oh, but it has AI. So you know what I mean? So so that form factor's back, but it's smarter than it's ever been. And perhaps without series elastic actuators. But I think Jeff nailed it. Yeah. I mean, bipeds, we're we're a decade out from a biped.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah. Well, and and this is this is where I wanted to talk about the mobility form factors. Uh because I am a hundred percent in agreement with Jeff. I am I am highly suspicious of humanoids, not because I think two arms are bad, but to quote George Orwell, two legs are bad. Four legs are good. Two legs are bad, four legs.

SPEAKER_09

Unless unless you're a real human.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, or unless you're a real human, in which case four legs would be terrifying. Um But like there is there have got to be better, more stable, and safer ways that are mechanically simpler, require less maintenance, um uh than bipedal robots. And and I haven't seen anything that tells me that shows me that that like bipedal locomotion is is necessary. Yeah. Um there are other ways to achieve this, and and we've seen success with four-legged robots, six-legged robots like Boston Dynamics have seen, has had great success with those mechanically. So I think there's opportunity there. And then also when you're talking about expanding automation into new environments or new spaces, um, there has been news for a decade or more about robots that are made of liquid or have or crawl like a snake. Um we have uh companies like Revolute Robotics, which have a robot that both rolls and flies, which is an incredible form of sort of mixed mobility. And so I think Jeff is on to something here where not only are we gonna see people maybe pulling back from humanoids a little bit, because I think relevant to that Russia video, we may also and I don't want to pick on Neo or 1X because I think they're doing cool, good work. Oh, it's important work, they're doing unnecessary work. But I am worried that what we are going to see with the launch of the NEO next year into homes is people withdrawing from humanoids.

SPEAKER_09

They're going to be If you have a bad experience as with everything else, right?

SPEAKER_06

And and and what they're doing is they're creating an opportunity for a lot of TikTok videos of bad experiences of humanoids. Yeah. Of them falling on a pet and hurting the pet or a child, God forbid. Yeah. Or something like that. Also the pet. Also the pet, yeah. Um pet works here. We're going to as as these things get out into the world, we're gonna start, we're gonna s start seeing the safety issues of them, we're gonna start seeing other issues with them. Um so I think people are gonna fall out of love with humanoids a little bit, and that may, I I hope, open up the opportunity for genuine innovation in forms of mobility and locomotion that opens up new opportunities for for automation. Going back to Matt's video about the climbing robots. There's a lot of potential with a climbing robot. There's so much you can do with that, and if you can get it good and reliable, that to me is more exciting than a humanoid.

SPEAKER_09

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So we have one more. Uh came in late. You guys have not seen this yet. But yeah, yeah. This is uh Brent Barcy from DW Fritz sent this in.

AMRs With Arms Vs Humanoids

SPEAKER_01

I think 2026 is gonna be uh an exciting year for all of us. It it just feels like everybody is ready to take capital off the shelf, they're ready to scale up, get out of the pile of purgatory that a lot of folks have been in the last couple years. With all the reshoring and onshoring going on, it's at the point now where if you don't automate, you can't you gotta get you gotta get automation stability, and you gotta make sure that your people are trained off with skills. So I just think 2026 is gonna be the year to scale for a lot of companies uh in the US that have brought a tremendous amount of manufacturing back into the country. And they're gonna do it through automation and through good people. So the way you can go, that is my prediction for 2026. Shameful calling people on LinkedIn to do these videos. Shameful.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you for the hate, Brent. Um, but I did love the positivity in the in the video.

SPEAKER_08

I think, you know, I think it's a lot of um momentum. I think this year brought a lot of momentum. And I I hope in 2026 it's a lot of let's go.

SPEAKER_09

That was very important, right? The only way, and I think people are realizing that they've got to spend some money to you know bring manufacturing back because we're at the point where we're in, you know, we're in a lot of pain because we didn't do this before. Like we should have been doing this ten years ago to get us into the point. Like I'm all for onshoring, but we need to support those people and get them the supplies that they need to build these factories and retrofit and all the things. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06

We've we've been talking about this for ages about labor shortages and labor access and um just the fact that humans can't achieve the level of quality that is kind of required these days, or the level of accuracy that is required these days. And something interesting that we recently heard talking to a European company is that European automation providers don't do pilots because the pressure to automate through through regulation, through like regulatory pressure, so the fact that you just can't have people work on working on Sunday in some countries, that lifting load limits for individuals are so low and are regulatorily enforced in a lot of the EU, and there's a bunch of other rules about how you can use human labor, means that companies there are desperate to adopt robotics and automation in a way that American companies kinda aren't, and they've been allowed to drag their feet just because the pressure is sort of amorphous, it's not it's not regulatory, right? So it's not specific. I think that's going to change. I think Brennan is is maybe on the money there that it's gonna change very, very soon, and companies are really gonna start seeing like, oh no, it's adapter die, it's automator die. Um and so they're gonna we're gonna start seeing some some uh movement.

SPEAKER_09

And I love that messaging for our automation and robotics providers here, especially in the US. Yeah. Because we we need a good year in 2026.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09

So all right, we have one last video.

SPEAKER_02

Mandy, I am so flattered that you asked me for my predictions for 2026. Um never ask me that again. Uh as tempting as it may be to scry the entrails of whatever fallen humanoid is out there, uh, I don't deal in predictions. I trade in realities. So, on that note, cheers to whatever realities may come in 2026. Love that, Gemma.

SPEAKER_09

Gemma Ross, like, no notes. That was so good. But that's a great video to close. Um yeah, I be we we we lashed about Nostradamus yesterday. That was a real conversation we had at Dwico. If you don't know who he is, look him up. But um, but yeah, and and cheers, Gemma, cheers, cheers to to you guys, cheers to all of our partners and collaborators, and those of you that have supported us over the past year. Um, you know, thank you, and see you in 2026.