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Operations
16 March
These drones are pinpointing lost inventory in warehouse stacks
Gather AI is deploying drones to help improve accuracy and speed within logistics operations.

(Photo via Gather AI)
Think of drones being used in ecommerce, and delivery probably comes to mind first. After all, Jeff Bezos’ famed 60 Minutes appearance in 2013 left a lasting vision of flying goods.
A decade later, a startup is showing that the last mile isn’t the only part of ecommerce logistics where autonomous aerial vehicles can make an impact.
Gather AI is deploying drones inside warehouses to help companies improve the accuracy of inventory counts, free up humans from repetitive labor and even locate inventory items that managers lost in the stacks. This week, the Pittsburgh-based company was named to the Retail Tech 100 from CB Insights, adding to a number of milestones over the last several years.
Founded out of Carnegie Mellon University’s famed robotics program by a team that was funded by DARPA to develop the first autonomous helicopter, Gather AI is applying the data collection capabilities of drones to inventory monitoring and asset gathering. During PhD work at CMU, CEO Sankalp Arora pursued a question at the center of how autonomous systems might interact with surroundings: How do you make drones curious?
“They were curious about landing zones, wires, openings in buildings and moving assets because my work was funded by the Department of Defense,” Arora said. “Now, my drones are curious about barcodes, boxes, racking and labels.”
Gather AI's drones are being used across multiple verticals of commerce, such as third-party logistics, retail distribution, manufacturing and food & beverage. Ahead of the company’s commercial launch in 2021, ecommerce emerged as a particular area that was rife with problems to solve. As fulfillment centers were getting bigger, the time required for humans with clipboards to count inventory only got longer. Additionally, the logistics space faced heavy labor attrition rates and even shortages, especially in the midst of the pandemic ecommerce boom.
“The warehouses were struggling to keep up,” Arora said. “Currently, our solution provides real-time inventory monitoring for those customers in warehouses nine to 15 times faster than current operations, and it is all visible and traceable, in real-time, with live photos.”
A drone flying in a warehouse. (Courtesy photo)
The drones fly between standing racks, using technology including robotics, computer vision and deep learning alongside cameras to map environments and collect data from the shelves. They run through an iPad, which provides monitoring and dashboards to review data. In one unique challenge among many that the company had to solve, there is no access to WiFi inside warehouses due to the metal construction, so the iPad and drones are connected.
The advancement of drones is an intriguing development for technologists, but for the people who run logistics operations, the question of their utility ultimately comes down to how it will help their business.
In some cases, these drones have been able to locate items after humans lost track of them. The company found 25,000 lost pallets for customers in 2022.
“It's misplaced inventory. It's not where it's supposed to be. It's somewhere in the warehouse. And as a result, if you get an order for that inventory, you don't get to pick it because you don't know where it is,” Arora said. “Now, we've found those and know exactly where they are, [so] they can fix their warehouse management system and start picking.”
That’s just one of the ways that the company said that drones improve inventory. Gather AI identified the following uses for warehouse drones, with stats from customers:
- Cycle count frequency: Full inventory collection time was reduced from 90 days to 2.5 days.
- Inventory accuracy: WMS error rate decreased from 11% to 3% in 3 months.
- Travel times: $250K-$350K was saved by improving putaway efficiency.
- Labor efficiency: 15x pallets were scanned per hour.
- Sales: 2x sales in one year.
To fuel growth, Gather AI raised $17.5 million to date from investors, including a $10 million Series A in 2021, and now has 30 employees. It is looking to continue to grow not only its customer base, but the number of facilities it is flying through for those current clients. Each time the company started with a company in one facility, it has added others from that same company. Now, it is expanding capabilities to expand visibility and traceability through the warehouses in order to function as a complete network.
With customer deployments and results to report, Gather AI will be heading to Promat 2023 and the IWLA Convention in March.
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Operations
03 March
AfterShip makes the post-purchase a customer connection point
The software company provides solutions for shipment tracking, returns and more.
Photo by Brandable Box on Unsplash
A sale isn’t completed until an item gets to a customer’s door. After all, a lot can happen in the miles a product travels in between. And even after it arrives, there are reviews, returns and hopefully the next purchase for a brand or retailer to consider.
It all means that, when it comes to building trust with customers, the post-purchase experience is just as important as what happens before a customer clicks “Buy.”
That post-purchase experience is the base from which AfterShip has been building solutions for more than a decade. The company currently works with more than 14,000 merchants, including brands like Harrys, TOMs, GoPro, and Kylie Cosmetics.
AfterShip started by helping brands and retailers gain visibility and efficiency on the path between the distribution point and the carrier. Founded in 2012, the company launched with a shipment tracking API solution. At this point, it was involved in label generation and creating tools that allowed retailers to onboard multiple carriers from a single interface. Alongside a predicted delivery date API, this offering remains a core focus today. With integrations with more than 1,030 carriers, it is used by platforms such as Amazon, Etsy, eBay and Google.
Today, AfterShip has 440 employees across seven offices, including a U.S. headquarters in Austin.
More recently, AfterShip has built out solutions that allow merchants to add visibility and new capabilities to the post-purchase experience for their customers. These include automated shipment notifications, logistics visibility dashboards, branded tracking pages and automated returns.
These features are designed to provide the latest information on where a package is, and when it will arrive. For instance, AfterShip customers can provide SMS notifications if a package is delayed. Such tools also serve as an additional touchpoint for customers. A branded tracking page can include item listings, bringing the potential for a check-in on an already-purchased item to result in another sale.
It all points toward allowing any merchant to deliver an “Amazon-like” experience, Joe Wyatt, head of digital solutions at AfterShip told The Current from the floor of the NRF Big Show 2023.
“We break down the barriers for any merchant to do that, from the smallest to the largest,” Wyatt said.
Looking ahead, Wyatt sees returns becoming a much more important focus. The combination of ecommerce growth and generous policies is leading returns to come in at unprecedented levels.
On one hand, returns are necessary at this point. Studies show that 60% of customers read return policies before shopping. On the other hand, sending already-purchased items back is leading to challenges in the supply chain. Those generous policies have led to a whole new set of behaviors that can generate waste. In one, called bracketing, consumers buy the same item in a number of sizes and colors, then keep only the one they like.
Given this dynamic, merchants are looking to create more return options to serve customers and cut down on logistics costs.
This is ushering in a new wave of solutions, such as return bars where items can be quickly dropped off in-person, or post-purchase options that rout consumers toward exchanges. AfterShip launched a new suite, called Returns Center, that allows brands and retailers to implement these capabilities.
It's a sign of how the company continues to build after a decade. As the post-purchase continues to gain importance, AfterShip aims to add tools to help brands and retailers deliver for customers.
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