VI. DISCUSSION
An important conclusion to draw from the APC is that recent developments in robotics have the potential of substantially increasing the degree of automation in warehouse logistics and order fulfillment in the near future. Many efforts to broaden the impact and applicability of robotics in industry beyond factory automation have faced substantial challenges. The kind of warehouse logistics addressed in the APC, however, can believably be automated using existing or near-future technologies and potentially faster than many other target applications of robotics. It therefore seems worthwhile to continue the APC in order to foster the exchange between the robotics community and relevant industrial partners.
Addressing warehouse logistics and order fulfillment in industrial settings will probably still require substantial scientific progress. As was outlined above, some of the standard solutions, such as motion planning or complex hands, were not necessary to succeed in the first instantiation of the APC. This may point to the fact that the space of possible solutions is not fully explored yet and that simple approaches may be a more promising route for critical applications despite the importance of providing general-purpose robots. It is possible that the focus on component technologies, such as 3D object pose estimation, control, motion planning, grasping, etc., has not allowed the community to study integrated solutions.