Trade Show Report: Modex 2022

April 02, 2022

MODEX 2022 Review

If you are involved in warehouse automation and material handling, Modex [website] (and its sister show, ProMAT) is the main trade show.

Modex 2022 did not disappoint and was super busy with around 800 exhibitors.

The Atlanta Georgia World Congress Center did not have huge Modex banners on the outside notifying everyone of where to go and what is happening. However, once inside the centre there were plenty of banners and information directing even first time visitors (like us) where to go easily.

Modex was held March 28-31 (Monday - Thursday) and according to more experienced hands, the show gets very busy on Tuesday & Wednesday. This was certainly our experience as well.

All the big names exhibit here, just to name a few: Dematic, MHS, TGW, SSI Schaefer, Opex, Geek+, Zebra, Jungheinrich, Linde, Logisnext, Noble Lift, ifm, etc.

Unfortunately, the layout of the centre is a bit confusing and there were many large stands mixed with smaller stands so we could not easily use our standard zig-zag approach to walking the aisles. However, this is a minor issue and may have been part of the interest in showing as well.

Despite being super busy, all the key people were here and we bumped into several contacts either by simply walking in the aisles or when visiting a different stand. You'll make plenty of connections!

We did, however, miss a few power sockets in the press area. (nudge nudge MHI if you read this)

Exhibitors & Product reviews

Boston Dynamics (website) is a PR friendly robotics company so here's a pose with our co-founder, Tom Andersson (LinkedIn). An expensive headscratcher? Nope, this is Boston Dynamics's container unloading robot...

Boston Dynamics is perhaps the Cirque Soleil of robotics and their engineers are capable of producing ballet dancing robots that could probably give professional athletes a run for their money in the Olympic games...

But BD's robots tend to be viewed in edited YouTube videos. Stretch is one of these products that we had never seen in real life. One aspect that was a bit disappointing was that the robot cannot autonomously connect to a charger... this is pretty much standard these days. So, effectively the robot requires a handler.

PSI Engineering (website) invited us for an early breakfast morning and talked about packing station design.

Near empty Modex... before opening hours.

Geek+ (website) showed off a few new solutions that were really interesting.

GreyOrange (website) showed off some of their ranges.

Even Prime Vision was at the show

Locus showed off their new developments from their Waypoint acquisition (bit disappointing however).

MHS probably won the prize for the coolest stand with their moving light ceiling (sorry no video).

Vecna showed off some of their developments.

K Hartwall exhibited their milkround trains.

MUL Technologies with their AMR bench or trolley. This is a bootstrapped robot for anyone looking to implement AMRs in their operations. No fleet manager and the robot can be programmed for up to 6 stops.