Episode 146 - Sheldon Zimmerman & Isabelle Durso, Rockwell Automation

“The end goal for a lot of clients is this dream of a lights-out factory. Before you get there, there’s a stepping stone in between — and it’s this connected factory.” Autonomous mobile robots spent years confined to warehouse aisles. Now, driven by a persistent labor shortage and a wave of AI, they’re moving into the heart of the factory — handling the material movement between “islands of operation” that people increasingly don’t want to do, and taking on mission-critical roles once considered too risky to automate. In this episode of Manufacturing Matters, TECH B2B Marketing’s Jimmy Carroll sits down with Rockwell Automation’s Sheldon Zimmerman (Global Head of AMR Sales) and Isabelle Durso (Business Manager, AMRs) at Automate 2026 in Chicago to unpack where mobile robotics is really headed and what it takes to get robots up and running on a plant floor. The conversation covers how AI is reshaping AMRs from the sensor up to the orchestration layer, the rise of mobile manipulation (and where humanoids do and don’t fit), why simulation and digital twins are becoming essential for de-risking deployments, and the real hurdles to adoption: IT/OT integration, physical infrastructure, and the brownfield-versus-greenfield divide. Zimmerman and Durso also make the case for starting small with pilots, the evolving safety standards that let robots and people share a floor, and why the “connected factory” — MES and ERP talking through a single orchestration layer — is the practical stepping stone toward lights-out manufacturing. Support the show