GXO CEO: Better robot hands, not Olympic-level humanoids, are what businesses really need

In a recent CEO Daily, Patrick Kelleher, CEO of logistics giant GXO Logistics, argues that businesses should focus on developing robots with strong, dexterous hands rather than humanoid robots capable of Olympic-level feats. At the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing, several robots set records for running and jumping, but Kelleher believes these abilities are not particularly useful for his industry.

Instead, he emphasizes the importance of single-digit challenges, such as enabling robot hands to move more like human hands. To achieve this, GXO is piloting various humanoid-robotics providers and will soon embark on another European pilot. The company aims to differentiate humanoid robots from industrial robots by their ability to mimic the complex movements of the human body, which can have more than 100 degrees of freedom compared to a typical industrial robot's four to six movements.

Kelleher does not intend to replace the 150,000 employees currently working for GXO, but rather to augment them and tackle the industry-wide challenge of labor shortages. With 25% turnover in the warehouse environment and difficulty finding enough labor, Kelleher believes that humanoid robotics AI can help associates work more efficiently, productively, and with higher quality.

The experiments are transforming GXO into a testing ground for a new model of human-machine collaboration, as various innovations such as fully autonomous forklifts and robots designed for extreme cold warehouses are explored.