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Robotics Trends PACK EXPO 2025: Packaging World · Through the Line: Packaging and Processing

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Through the Line, the podcast exploring innovations and information across the packaging and processing landscape.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_01: From topics impacting consumer packaged goods and healthcare packaging to the latest technologies in food processing operations.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Through the Line podcast.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Matt Reynolds.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm the Chief Editor Packaging World.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: And joining me today is our senior editor, Anne-Marie Mohan.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Anne-Marie, thanks for being here.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks, Matt.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_02: Glad to be here.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: So once again, Pac Expo International hits McCormick Place here in Chicago on October 18th through the 21st.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: It only comes around every other year.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're going, you're probably already thinking about how to maximize and optimize your time there.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: So today we're going to be looking at robotics.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: So last year at PacExpo Las Vegas, our entire editorial team spent three days walking the show, doing hundreds of booth visits between all of us, at least, for all types of materials, machinery.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: But we found there's likely to be a reasonable guide to the kinds of innovations that you're going to see going forward in Chicago this year.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: So Anne Marie also, she spent a lot of time here in Chicago at Automate, which is another huge show that deals with automation more broadly, but specifically robotics.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: And it also gave her a real close, up close and personal look at where AI-driven robotics are heading.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, in our September issue, she's got quite an extensive report on all sorts of robotic innovations, some on the autonomous mobile robot side, but also AI as well.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: All of this is going to turn up at PAC Expo at some point, and you're going to be looking for it.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: One more piece of direction worth mentioning, and that's PMI has a new robotics report coming out with a forecast for where this market's going to be going over the next five years.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it points pretty clearly at what's worth spending your time at the show.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: So with that long preamble and a lot of housekeeping out of the way, let's talk about what we expect to see in Chicago in October.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: But to do that, let's look through the lens of Las Vegas.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: But why don't you get started, Anne-Marie?
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: Take a first swing at it.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_02: So, Matt, I would say the clearest shift that I observed was the lowered costs and lowered complexity versus new capabilities.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_02: Very little of what we saw was a new capability in robotics.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_02: But what changed now is who can afford the robots and who can run the robots.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_02: So IGIS in particular showed their cobalt palletizer called the Ferino FR20.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_02: It starts at$37,000.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_02: And the company says that's among the lowest cost cobalt palletizers available.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_02: And the company made that price, the headline of the demo.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, they had a big sign hanging over the cobalt saying that just$37,000, which itself tells you something about where costs are going.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I know that's by putting that on the billboard as opposed to hiding it in a spec sheet somewhere, that that's telling you something about where they're focused.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, absolutely.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_02: Another example of cost reduction was tutor intelligence.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_02: This is a company I haven't heard of before, but they're offering robotics as a service.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_02: So they said that their palletizing robots are$10,000 to deploy, and then you just pay for the hours that the robot's actually in motion.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_02: And the company claimed that with this robot, you can see a 30 to 40% operational savings compared with manual palletizing.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_02: And as I said, I haven't heard of tutor intelligence, but ForMake is another company that you and I are both very familiar with.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_02: We've worked with them before on stories.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_02: They were at the show as well, and they also offer robotics as a service.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_02: They exhibited last year with their robotic palletizing equipment.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_02: Their model, though, has zero capex.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_02: Customers just pay a flat operational hourly rate, and only when the palletizer is actively stacking boxes.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_02: So this is a very big difference economically from purchasing your own robot, especially if you're just getting started and you want to test the waters.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_02: So when we talk about reduced complexity, Beaks introduced the PALS eye, which the company said it's the first plug-and-play industrial robot palletizer.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_02: So it can be installed in less than an hour with Stacket software, their proprietary software.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_02: And the Stacket software requires no code.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_02: So Alex Lee, chief strategy officer for the company, he said something that I keep coming back to when I'm thinking about this the change in capabilities versus complexity, et cetera.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_02: He said palletizing is becoming commoditized.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_02: And for B robot, everything is essentially a brown box.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_02: So all that matters is how fast, how big, and how heavy, which I found very interesting to put in.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: So it's becoming whatever the distinguishing characteristics about some of these companies might have been are being eroded to what might be the bottom line, just the actual specs.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: How quickly is this going to move?
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: How quickly do you need it to move?
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: How expensive is it's going to be?
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: So it almost boils down to a cost per size type of an equation or cost per speed type of equation, which is a democratizing force, I think.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I would argue, so it feels like instead of having these huge barriers to entry to the robotics market, several of those suppliers that you've been talking about are actually lowering those barriers and making it simpler for CPGs, brand owners, contract packagers to access this technology.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: So where does AI enter the picture versus where it's just what we would consider traditional vision systems?
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_02: That's an interesting question.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_02: And it's really worth separating those two technologies, AI and vision, because they really got blurred a lot on the shelf floor.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_02: Most of what we saw was machine vision getting better.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_02: And AI showed up in exactly one of the booths we visited, and we visited most of the robotics exhibits.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_02: So I think what people are thinking of as AI, a lot of times it's just better vision.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_02: One example of better vision used by a robotic system was Douglas Machines Trivax DL Top Load Case Packer.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_02: It uses a SIC 3D camera that identifies product by shape, depth, and outer perimeter instead of color.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_02: So that now eliminates the precision lighting requirement, which is real constraint on a line.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_02: And it does that without costing the customer throughput.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_02: The system still runs at 235 products per minute.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_02: Another one was JLS.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_02: They built the Peregrine IS Monoblock Cartner.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_02: They built it around vision guided picking, a randomly oriented product into cartons.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_02: Again, no AI claim here, just vision solving the problem of product that arrives however it arrives.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_02: So the one robotic system, though, that, and I mentioned we did see one that was genuinely AI, and that was the Siemens SI robot pick AI system.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_02: And that was also one of PMMI's technology excellence award winners.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_02: So it definitely caught the eye of the PMMI award judges.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_02: It uses AI to do the perception work in picking.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_02: It can look at a random bin, a bin of random jumbled objects, and it can figure out by itself where each object is and how to grip it without any kind of trained model of the products and nothing holding these products in position.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_02: The random objects are just thrown in a bin, and then the algorithm finds them and retrieves them.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_02: And what made it a credible AI solution is that Siemens was clear about what AI does and what it doesn't do.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_02: It can tell the robot where to grab, but it has no idea what the object is.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_02: So they layered that around a second AI model that's NVIDIA's visual language model.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_02: So that describes or classifies the item once it's in the gripper.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_02: And they also mentioned the use of an inspector vision system for defect detection.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_02: So that flags a bad part, excuse me, so that the robot can divert it.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_02: So these are two different AI models, two different jobs.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_02: So that was an example of AI that we saw at the show.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: So the old model was to hold the product in a fixed position, control the lighting, teach the robot the coordinate coordinates.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: The new model is that the machine figures out where the product is, and then vision gets you 90% of the way down the track, and then AI extends it to the cases that vision can't handle.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: So if the robot can now handle product in any orientation, and like you said, vision gets you most of the way there, AI gets you over the finish line.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: What the kind of the bottleneck is moved down to the gripper itself, the actual end-of-arm tooling, isn't it?
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_02: And we saw some really interesting and fun examples of new grippers.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_02: One was a Schmals.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_02: At Schmals, they showed the M grip finger gripper.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_02: So it's a modular end-of-arm tool that's built for, they said a regular, delicate, and variably shaped product.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_02: So it's K-rated, so it handles food directly.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_02: So a smart controller in this gripper manages the grip strength and the opening.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_02: So when it goes into the bin, it will it can pick these irregularly shaped items and know how much grip strength to use.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_02: And they showed examples of a bagel, a donut, and an apple.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_02: And as you can imagine, they all have a different, will require a different gripping strength.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_02: So they went, the gripper went from one to the other, picking them and not smooshing the donut, very indicative of what this gripper can do.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_02: And then Convergix also demonstrated a soft gripper.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_02: And it was an example of a high-speed food grade washdown-rated cell.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_02: And it was equipped with a Delta robot and it handles multiple geometries.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_02: So now that e-commerce and mixed skew packaging is growing, the differentiation is moving from, as we were talking about, from the arm to the hand, so to speak.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, interesting.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I know I can I can think of a lot of distribution centers and fulfillment centers.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: And again, like you said, the the mixed skew packaging, or sometimes when I order from something from Amazon, it might be a toothbrush, a nine-iron, and a fishing lure.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: So all three of those things have to be handled by the same robotics and cobotics.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: So interesting trends.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: So we were just talking about the PMI report.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I got a sneak preview because I I got a look at your article, which is going to be in a September issue.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: It might be out already.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: And it basically it talks about the, I guess, the advent of the autonomous mobile robot age.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: So why don't you let us know some of those further findings from the report and how the AMRs are really fitting into that for package?
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_02: And that was the result or the headline that I wanted to that I was excited to share because it was totally, I did not expect that at all.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_02: Mobile robots are projected to overtake industrial robots to become the industry's largest robotic segment by revenue by 2031, which I didn't see that coming.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_02: I think in the past five years, I think I've written one article about a packaging operation that was using an AMR or and so I haven't seen a lot of examples of that.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_02: Although when I was at Automate and was talking to some of these suppliers of this equipment and asking them about its potential in those markets, they said yes, but it'll be slow.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_02: So it really surprised me that Piano Mai's report showed that they'll be 45% of the total revenue by 2031.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: Good.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: And you mentioned another acronym there.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: I expilled the beans on the AMR.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: There's an autonomous mobile robot.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: You mentioned AGV, so maybe we should disambiguate between the two.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_02: So an AGV is also a mobile robot.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_02: So it it moves like a train on tracks and it relies on external guides like magnetic tape, wires in the floor, QR codes, whereas an AMR, which is an autonomous mobile robot, it moves like a car in a street.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_02: It uses built-in sensors, cameras, digital maps to figure out its own route.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_02: So both mobile robots, different way of being guided around a facility.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: Good.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now you mentioned 45% of total revenue.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: Mobile robots are expected to be 45% of total revenue for robots in general.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: So the market overall goes from, I think it was 440 million in 2025 to almost double 800 million in 2031.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: So that's about a 10% average annual growth.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: Where is the opportunity?
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: Where is this growth going to be happening?
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because it feels like they feel fairly ubiquitous already, but where are they going to grow into?
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_02: So apparently there are packaging operations that are using them, obviously, although I haven't talked to many of them.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_02: But among those end users who are deploying them today, 52% of them are using them for load carrying, material transport, 35% for load pulling.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_02: But right now, only 9% of them are being used for raw material handling or production.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_02: 56% of OEMs and integrators who often offer, excuse me, mobile robots already have solutions for that application.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_02: And this is where end users told PMMI where they want to use these robots to bring raw materials and the packaging supplies to the line and take the finished goods away.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_02: So I think that's where we'll see the growth.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's what the PMMI is saying, and that's what the study is saying.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: You were at both PACExpo, Las Vegas, and so is there proof in the pudding?
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: Was there evidence out there?
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_02: I did see applications at PACExpo.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_02: Kawasaki was showing the Nova IPC 25 pelletizing cell.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_02: It was paired with an AMR.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_02: And when I spoke with Kawasaki, they said interest in that pairing has moved well past three PLs into smaller warehouses and smaller companies.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_02: Another one was Vision Nav.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_02: They had the BN Autonomous Counterbalance Stacker, and it was stacking knockdown totes to very tight tolerance using 3D slam navigation and LIDAR perception, which they said most autonomous robots struggle with.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_02: And then the last one I saw was Edson.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_02: They've designed its D strapping in feed system to be fed by an 80, an AGV, a laser-guided vehicle or a fork truck so the whole line can run.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_02: And I saw the same convergence at Automate where Kesaw robots had a cobalt arm mounted on an AGV.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, interesting.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I guess that the past being a predictor of the future, given your recent experiences, what should somebody who's walking the PACExpo International Trade Show floor, you're in Chicago, what should they be looking for when it comes to robotics?
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_02: Well, because of all we've talked about, definitely put mobile robots on your list.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_02: There are several exhibitors we know of already who will be showing AMRs.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_02: One is KUKA.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_02: They're going to be running a live demonstration showing an AMR that's moving pallets in and out of a robotic cell.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_02: Another one is Camagroup, which is showing AMRs for internal logistics as part of an end-to-end packaging system.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_02: But the KUCO demonstration is the one that I'd really prioritize because seeing an AMR handoff to a robotic cell is precisely the thing that PMMI says is coming.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: Good.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: AMRs aren't the only game in town.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: There are more traditional robotics that are still a major part of the market.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: And they are uh front and center in dealing with variety, the increasing variety of products out there.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: SKU proliferation is what we call it.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: And then also retail ready formats.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: All of these are just the sheer variety.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: Just keep pressuring a packaging line because you have to do more with more different styles, more payloads, longer reach.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: All these windows are getting wider and wider.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: So is the equipment in your experience, your recent experience, is that keeping up with these, these, these actual brand and CPG challenges?
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_02: The interesting thing is what we saw at PAC Expo Las Vegas is that changeover time is now becoming more important than the top speed as the number that vendors really lead with when they're talking about their new products.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_02: Wexar Bell's Bell 625 Case Erector, it does fully automatic changeovers with smart sensors, detecting the case dimensions in real time.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_02: Wexar Bell said that the marketplace is asking for changeover that's reliable, repeatable, and predictable.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_02: And they're getting that through robotic case for me.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_02: So Del Corse EVO does full-line changeovers in six minutes with quick change tooling.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_02: And it also got 20% faster when we saw it last year, up to 70 products per minute from 60 per minute per cell before Thallus.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_02: They're another one.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_02: They showed toolless changeover in under 15 minutes on their Adibot LV retail ready case packer.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_02: So at the show, I spoke with sales manager Matt Mahoney and he explained the engineering behind that 50% rate increase.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_02: He said that they added a servo and they removed a set of flights.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_02: So each servo runs slower while the whole machine runs faster.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_02: And then another example that I saw was Premier Tech's Tech Kronos' CPW case packer.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_02: It handles boxes, trays, cups, pouches, and doy packs into shelf cases with tool-free changeover.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_02: So that's really becoming the headline is how fast can this machine change over to handle these proliferation of skews and versus how fast can it run?
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Anne Marie, for walking us through all that.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: And thanks for walking not one but two massive shows here in Chicago.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: So that's I'm sure that added to your step count for both of those events.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, and I'm ready to put more steps on my Fitbit as we head to Chicago.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's the name of the game.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: Wear comfortable shoes.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's your first piece of advice.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're planning to spend some time in Chicago at PacExpo, robotics is worth thinking about deliberately and putting on your list.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: Again, that runs October 18th through the 21st at McCormick Place.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: Only comes around every other year.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: So this is the bigger one of the two.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: Registration and the exhibitor directory are all at packexpointernational.com.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: And really the directory is the fastest way to map out what booths are showing what and which booths are showing where, and so on.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: So you can really optimize your time by planning ahead.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's called map your show, is what we use.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: So really, this is one of several Pac Expo previews that we've put together so far.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: I think we've touched on sustainability and some coding and marking and labeling.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: So if robotics isn't your only interest, we've also covered those subjects.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: Flexible packaging is another one that is either run or will be running soon.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: And you'll find those where wherever you're listening to this podcast, whatever your favorite podcatcher is.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: And all of our reporting, of course, is always at home at packworld.com.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: So that's it for this episode of the Through the Line podcast.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Anne-Marie, and we'll see you in Chicago.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for listening to Through the Line Packaging and Processing.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: You can listen to more episodes on all streaming platforms.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: Be sure to visit us at packworld.com, profoodworld.com, and healthcarepackaging.com for more packaging and processing news.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: This podcast was edited by Bree Guns