Who fixes the robots? Field service is the next bottleneck in robotics

For most of the last 40 years, robots lived in controlled places. Automotive plants, electronics lines, big distribution centers. The robots were bolted down, the company that bought them had a maintenance crew on site, and the manufacturer could send a service engineer because the customer was big enough to justify it.

That world is changing fast. Robots are now working in commercial kitchens, hospitals, hotels, office buildings, farms, construction sites, parking lots and sidewalks. Humanoid robots are starting to show up in pilot programs, and consumer models are not far behind. Each of those deployments tends to be small and spread out: a handful of units here, a dozen there, in cities the robot maker has never had a reason to staff.

Everyone in the industry is talking about how to build, sell and deploy these robots. Far fewer people are talking about what happens on day 200, when a sensor fails at 6 a.m. in a kitchen 900 miles from the nearest company engineer.

The service math does not work for most robot companies

Picture a growing robotics company with 60 robots in the field across 30 cities. The robots work. Customers like them. Then something breaks.

The company has three options, and none of them are good:

1. Fly an engineer out. That means travel cost, a day or two of lost time, and a senior engineer pulled off product work to swap a part.
2. Walk the customer through the fix over the phone. Sometimes that works. Often the customer is a restaurant manager or a facilities lead who did not sign up to be a robot technician.
3. Hire full-time technicians in every market. With two robots in a city, that person sits idle most of the week. With 30 cities, the payroll gets ugly fast.

So the robot sits. And a robot that sits is not just a repair ticket. It is a customer who starts wondering whether automation was worth it, a renewal that gets harder, and a reference account that goes quiet.

I have spent more than 30 years running operations, and the pattern is familiar. When a product scales faster than the service behind it, the service gap becomes the growth limit. Robotics is hitting that point now.

What operators and robot makers should look for in a field service partner

The answer for most companies is going to be a third-party field service partner, the same way elevators, HVAC and medical equipment ended up being serviced. But not every service provider is built for robots. Here is what I would look for:

Platform training before dispatch. A general technician who has never seen your robot should not be learning on your customer's floor. The technician should be trained and certified on your specific platform before they are ever sent to a site.

Local people, recruited around your deployments. Coverage maps look great in a sales deck. What matters is whether there is a trained person within reach of the sites you actually have, and whether the provider will recruit and train in a new market when you land a new customer there.

Preventive maintenance, not just break-fix. A lot of downtime is avoidable. Scheduled inspections, cleaning, calibration and wear-part replacement keep robots working and cost far less than emergency calls.

Remote diagnostics first. A good share of problems can be solved over a video call or through the robot's own software. A service partner should start there and only roll a truck when it is needed.

Clean reporting back to the manufacturer. Every visit is field data. The robot maker should get a clear report on what failed, what was done and what parts were used, so the next version of the robot is better.

Multi-platform capability. Most operators will not run one brand of robot forever. A partner who can support several platforms keeps the operator from juggling five different service contracts.

Realistic coverage hours. After-hours and weekend coverage matters in food service, healthcare and logistics. Be wary of anyone who promises everything, everywhere, all the time.

Humanoids will make this problem bigger, not smaller

Humanoid robots are designed to work in spaces built for people, which means they will end up in far more locations than any robot arm ever did. They also have more joints, more sensors and more moving parts. When humanoids start shipping in real numbers into businesses, and later into homes, the service network needs to already exist. Building it after the robots arrive is too late.

The robotics companies that win the next decade will not just have the best robot. They will have the robot that stays running. That takes a plan for service in every market where a customer plugs one in.

Our approach at Robo Reliance

This is why we started Robo Reliance. We provide installation, preventive maintenance, break-fix repair and remote support for commercial and emerging robots across the United States, independent of any one manufacturer. That includes warehouse and logistics robots, cleaning and delivery robots, food service robots, agricultural and construction robots, drones, and humanoid robots.

Our technicians are 1099 independents, recruited, vetted and trained market by market around each client's deployments, and trained and certified on each client's platform before dispatch. Robot makers get a field service arm without building one, and operators get someone local who knows their robot.

Robots are leaving the factory. Service has to follow them.

About the author

Steve Urban is Founder and COO of Robo Reliance (https://www.google.com/url?q=http://roboreliance.com&source=gmail&ust=1790615271559000&sa=E), a Colorado-based company that provides nationwide field service for commercial and emerging robotics, including humanoid robots. He has more than 30 years of operations leadership experience, has written four books, and hosts the Riderflex Podcast. Contact: steve.urban@roboreliance.com, (800) 838-0156.