Good Fences Make Good Neighbors – Why to Consider Fencing with your Warehouse AMRs

In the world of warehouse automation, speed and flexibility often top the list of design priorities. Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) have become synonymous with agile fulfillment, free-flowing movement, and collaborative human-machine interaction. So when someone suggests fencing in an AMR field, it’s natural to raise an eyebrow. Isn’t the whole point of AMRs to eliminate rigid boundaries?

But here’s the counterintuitive truth: fencing in AMRs isn’t a limitation. In the right environment, it’s a strategic design choice; one that can dramatically improve throughput, minimize risk, and amplify the return on automation investments.

Let’s unpack why.

Safety and Throughput Aren’t at Odds

First, let’s address the obvious: physical barriers improve safety through engineering controls. When AMRs are operating at high speeds in densely packed environments, even a momentary human intrusion into their path can trigger emergency stops, slowdowns, or worse, accidents. Each interruption introduces latency into the system and potentially exposes personnel to harm.

Fencing provides predictable boundaries. It allows the AMR field to operate in a closed, high-velocity loop without needing to account for human unpredictability. You can tune the robots for optimal performance without compensating for variable traffic or visual obstructions. Safety zones become simpler to define, validate, and enforce.

It’s a mistake to think of fencing purely as a restriction. In this case, it’s an enabler allowing the system to perform closer to its theoretical maximum speeds by removing uncertainty.

Fencing Enables Specialization

Not every space in a warehouse needs to be shared between people and machines. In fact, the most productive facilities often engineer the operation for role specialization: AMRs work here, humans work there. The interfaces between zones are clean, predictable, and governed by well-defined handoff processes.

Collaborative robots, AMRs that are designed to mingle with people safely, have their place. In collaborative applications such as picking, restocking, and kitting environments where human interaction is integral, their flexibility is unmatched.

But in dense storage zones, goods-to-person operations, or continuous loop transport systems, spatial specialization clarifies boundaries. When designed thoughtfully, fenced zones don’t reduce flexibility, they clarify it. They draw a deliberate boundary between high-speed robotic movement and human workspaces. Fencing forces us to be intentional.  Through this intentionality, predictable workflows are established that are uninterrupted and shielded from the chaos of both manual equipment and human traffic.

Scalability and Repeatability Win in the Long Run

One of the biggest advantages of fenced AMR zones is how easily they scale. With a controlled space, it’s far easier to model behavior, simulate capacity, and scale performance predictably.

Think of it as a mini factory within the warehouse, one where variability is minimized, throughput is maximized, and the outputs are reliable. When using industry-standard processes such as conveyance or pick-transfer stations, handoffs between fenced and unfenced areas can be automated, seamless, and safe with the proper sensors.

Fenced zones also make regulatory compliance and safety audits more straightforward. From a risk management perspective, the clarity of a physically bounded zone simplifies everything from emergency planning to training.

No More Sitting on the Fence

So why does the idea of fencing around AMRs still cause hesitation among warehouse professionals? Because as an industry, we’ve spent a decade evangelizing the idea that AMRs are free-roaming, boundaryless problem-solvers. The imagery of unbounded robots buzzing around people is compelling and it sells flexibility.

But high-performing operations aren’t built on marketing imagery. They’re built on well-architected systems that embrace predictability and intentional constraints to unlock performance. Fencing isn’t a philosophical betrayal of AMRs’ promise; it’s a mature evolution of it.

We’re no longer in the age of proving whether AMRs work. We’re in the age of enabling them to work safely at scale, at speed, and with repeatable results.

That requires knowing when to open space and when to fence it in.

Learn more about KPI Solutions and how we can help you determine if AMRs are the right fit for your warehouse: contact KPI Solutions