Not Kiva bots specifically, but similar concept, different vendors. Lots of new companies popped up in the years after Amazon bought them, but their protectionism definitely set the industry back at least 5 years. I don’t want to share any specific vendors, because that would cause the info that I’m sharing to violate my NDAs.

And yeah, you’re totally right about the environmental and reading constraints, but I’m talking more the internal problems that I’ve noticed in a few different vendors’ logic. I’m also an engineer so i totally get what you’re talking about, and the dumb robot problem that I’m talking about is simply insufficient engineering. Problems like sending a robot to pick up a rack to move it, then setting a path that is impassable despite the system having all the necessary inputs and correctly recording and storing all the data necessary to make a more informed decision and choose a better path. But instead the robot takes the impassable path, then when its censors notice there is a blockage, it stops but it’s too late to get another path at that point because of system constraints. If the logic had properly validated the path with the available data at the time of assignment rather than visual cues much later, it would cause much fewer issues. So that’s one example the sort of thing I’m referring to when I say they’re too dumb.