“It’s not about a lights-out warehouse. It’s about making people able to drive more forklifts.”
That’s how our CEO and co-founder Arshan Poursohi described shared autonomy to Kevin Lawton, CLTD on The New Warehouse.
The forklift handles routine moves on its own and is trained to recognize when it doesn’t know what to do. When something isn’t right, like a pallet where it shouldn’t be or a storage location that’s already occupied, it asks for help. A person resolves it, and the truck carries on.
Autonomy handles the routine. People handle the judgment calls.
Watch the clip below, and listen to the full episode here: https://bit.ly/4ie2GbJ
Why this matters for talent
The CEO's framing of shared autonomy, where the forklift handles routine moves and asks for help on exceptions, is a useful way to think about where human judgment still matters most in warehouse automation. That kind of human-in-the-loop design usually needs more field support and training roles than a fully lights-out system would. Third Wave Automation lists 1 open role on the jobs board.
Read the original LinkedIn post. Curated by Larry Sherwood Jr. from company announcements; analysis above is my own.