Rick Faulk, CEO of Locus Robotics, argues in a SupplyChainBrain Think Tank piece that the robots-to-goods (R2G) model is positioned to define the next era of warehouse automation by addressing the core trade-offs that have constrained legacy architectures — flexibility, scalability and human-labor variability. Faulk notes that two decades of automation growth have made warehouses denser, faster and more efficient, yet a truly flexible, predictable and resilient warehouse at scale has remained elusive. The reason, he says, is that nearly every automation model trades flexibility for density or speed while still carrying the uncertainty that comes with human labor.
Faulk groups existing options into three categories. Goods-to-person (G2P) systems — robots, conveyors or shuttles bringing items to operators — deliver storage density but lock inventory inside a sealed black box, where scaling throughput requires adding stations and post-installation reconfiguration is hard. Person-to-goods (P2G) systems are more flexible but humans still do the picking, retaining the variability of a warehouse labor force. Automated storage and retrieval systems (AS/RS) store inventory in fixed racks or grids and rely on cranes or shuttles; they are capital-intensive, hard to adapt, and payback on the investment can run five years or more. Because capacity is fixed, operators routinely overbuild for peak and pay for underutilization the rest of the year, and warehouse volumes rarely match the forecast assumptions used to design the system.
R2G inverts the model: robots go directly to inventory, pick items autonomously, and place them precisely into destination totes with no human involvement. Removing humans from the picking and putaway workflow makes the operation machine-like — throughput becomes predictable, performance is consistent across shifts, and variability drops out of the equation. AI-based vision equips the robot to discern items, select the correct grasp point, and place fragile or irregular SKUs deliberately, turning what used to be an edge case for automation into a repeatable workflow that improves with every pick. The same software stack that lets the robots navigate complex layouts also coordinates how work gets sequenced and routed across the floor, with continuous decisions about where to go next, how to avoid slowdowns and which task delivers the lowest cost per pick.
From a supply chain perspective the R2G value proposition is that warehouse automation becomes a "living system": it can be redeployed in new buildings or retrofitted into existing ones, adapted as capacity and demand shift, and progressively extended to additional workflows such as replenishment, returns and re-slotting. Rather than maximum density, R2G aims for "enough density plus agility" — inventory remains accessible, workflows stay adaptable, and the system can evolve alongside the business. Faulk closes by framing R2G as a model that can address virtually all of the problems that have plagued automated solutions for the last 20 years — eliminating labor-driven variability, preserving design flexibility, and delivering a level of predictability the other architectures were never built to provide — making it a credible candidate to define the warehouse automation category over the coming decade.
Key Takeaways:
1. Locus Robotics CEO Rick Faulk positions robots-to-goods (R2G) as the model set to define the next era of warehouse automation.
2. Legacy goods-to-person (G2P), person-to-goods (P2G) and AS/RS systems trade flexibility, scale and labor variability; AS/RS payback can stretch beyond five years.
3. In R2G, robots travel to inventory and pick autonomously, removing human variability and delivering consistent, predictable throughput across shifts.
4. AI-based vision lets robots identify SKUs, choose the correct grasp point and place fragile items deliberately, turning edge cases into repeatable workflows.
5. R2G is framed as an adaptable 'living system' that can be retrofitted into existing buildings and progressively extended to replenishment, returns and re-slotting.
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