Material Handling in the FUTURE! (Even Entertainment Can’t Live Without It.)
By Alex Batty, MHI Marketing Communications Coordinator |@mhi_alex
So I was trundling about the Internet, as I am known to do, and I landed on YouTube.
As per usual.
And as per usual, the suggested videos in the side pane sucked me into a black hole, and I ended up watching videos far from my usual path of wandering. Which led me to the discovery that inspired this particular post. I saw a thumbnail in that magic side pane that looks interesting to my crazy brain… and of course I click on it, not realizing it’s for a video game (Detroit: Become Human).
Now, I’m not a gamer; I know nothing about that world or what’s new and fabulous, but of course YouTube’s algorithms do, and I’m absolutely astounded by the graphics, so I keep watching anyway.
And then I about jumped off my couch as I was shouting and pointing “LOOK AT THAT! I KNOW THAT!”
This is what I was looking at:
THAT’S A SELF-DRIVING VEHICLE BEING USED IN A (fancy) WAREHOUSE!
And look! Robots assembling robots:
So it got me wondering: what other futuristic movies/entertainment have material handling equipment featured in them?
Buckle up, buttercups. I did research. (And by research I mean a watched movies.)
The first one that popped into my head was Wall-E. Hadn’t seen it before now, and I thought it was all about robots, so the odds were pretty good that I was going to see something familiar. And yes, yes I did.
Not 10 minutes into the movie, we rock up to Wall-E’s home and what do I see? A VERTICAL CAROUSEL! He reaches up with his little grippers and rotates that sucker to find exactly what he needs, but still has efficient storage space.
(You can also see a big ol’ one of these used for individual rooms in the movie Robots)
Then, when we get to the special ship (trying to be vague because spoilers), we see lil’ robots with different functions following a set path; can you say AGVs?!?!
There are actually AGV/SGVs all through the movie, as well as industrial robots doin’ stuff.
At this point I stopped screenshotting, because they were just everywhere. Ubiquitous!
(P.S. I avoided the movie when it first came out because I heard there was no dialogue. A) That was not true; B) I actually really liked the movie. 10/10 would recommend.)
The next movie I tried was Avatar. Y’know, the big blue aliens one. And I found some! Here we have a rugged AGV moving what looks like pipe? Maybe missiles?
And this is 100% a scissor lift on wheels. (I know the screenshots are low quality, but trust me, it looks like that when it’s moving).
So while we’ve been wandering through this long, long post, I’m sure you’re wondering what the point is and how I’m going to tie it in so I don’t get fired for posting nonsense. The point is this. These movies and games are trying to imagine the future: what we do, how we live, how we work. And no matter how advanced the society gets, we still need material handling. The particulars of how we do it may evolve and change as we do, but the industry? That’s never going away. Even in the most hi-tech, evolved future our dreamers can think of.
What are other movies/games/forms of entertainment set in the future that have material handling equipment? Tweet at me to know what I missed (@mhi_alex). You know I love finding material handling in everyday life.
