FAQs
Gather AI is the Physical AI platform your whole operation runs on. One ground truth, every role from the floor to the C-suite.
About Gather AI
Who is Gather AI?
Gather AI is the Physical AI platform for logistics. It gives the companies that run the world's warehouses ground truth on what is physically in every building, the intelligence to understand it, and the workflows to act on it. Founded in 2017 by Carnegie Mellon robotics PhDs and raised $74M in funding, Gather AI works with companies like GEODIS, NFI, Langham Logistics, Barrett Distribution Centers, and Taylor Logistics across third-party logistics, retail distribution, manufacturing, food and beverage, and life sciences.
How does Gather AI work?
Gather AI captures the physical state of the warehouse, reasons over it, and turns it into action. The platform is Gather AI Prana and it works in three layers: See, Think, Act. Vision captures every pallet, case, and location autonomously using drones and forklift-mounted cameras. Sage reasons across what Vision captured alongside your WMS, and other systems data to answer operational questions and detect anomalies. Workflows routes the resulting exceptions and tasks to the right people to take the right action. The result is one continuous, dock-to-dock view of what is actually in the facility, every shift.
What is Physical AI for logistics?
Physical AI is a system that observes the real world, makes sense of it, and acts on it. In a warehouse, that means computer vision reading what is actually on the racks, AI reasoning over it against everything the business already knows, and that intelligence becoming a task in the systems teams already run. It is different from a transaction system like a WMS, which records what should be on the floor, and different from physical automation, which moves goods faster without checking whether the record is right.
What problem does Gather AI solve?
Gather AI reads the floor continuously and keeps the two in sync. It works out what each difference means against everything else the business already knows, then routes it to the person who can resolve it, in the tools they already use. Waves, labor plans, slotting decisions, and customer commitments then run on current reality instead of a count from last week.
Is Gather AI a drone company?
No, though that is where Gather AI started. Drone Vision is still one of the ways Gather AI Vision sees the floor. Vision then expanded with MHE Vision, forklift-mounted cameras that capture pallets as your team moves them. Together they deliver true dock-to-dock intelligence: inventory at rest in the racks, and inventory in motion across the floor.
What is autonomous cycle counting?
Autonomous cycle counting is inventory counting performed by equipment that navigates and captures on its own, with nobody walking aisles or riding a lift. With Gather AI, a drone flies scheduled missions through the aisles and counts locations on its own, or forklift-mounted cameras capture every pallet as operators move it during normal work. Counts run without pulling anyone off fulfillment. Every capture is parsed for more than ten data points including location, occupancy, and damage, and the photograph is retained as proof.
Accuracy and ROI
How accurate is Gather AI?
Gather AI delivers 99.9% inventory record accuracy, shelf to record. The vision models are trained on millions of real warehouse observations accumulated across live deployments since 2017, and every facility read makes the next one more accurate. Because every count ships with a photograph, accuracy is verifiable rather than asserted.
Is Gather AI more accurate than a manual cycle count?
Yes. Manual counting depends on a person reading every barcode correctly, and the locations hardest to reach, high racking and freezer aisles, are the ones most often estimated or skipped. Gather AI Vision reads every location the same way on every pass, so the result is a wall-to-wall read of the building rather than the parts that were easy to get to. A manual count also returns one number per location. Vision parses more than ten data points from every image, so a single pass returns quantity alongside condition, placement, and occupancy. Then there is freshness. A count is accurate the moment it ends and goes out of date from the next shift onward. Drone Vision and MHE Vision observes continuously, so the picture is current when you act on it, and every figure carries a photograph rather than a clipboard entry.
What is the ROI on Gather AI?
Six-month time to ROI is typical. GEODIS took manual counting from 4,400 hours a year to 800. Taylor Logistics cut cycle-counting time by 87%. Langham Logistics reached ROI in under a year while cutting inventory fire drills by roughly 96%.
What we capture
What data does the system capture?
Gather AI Vision captures what is on the pallet and where it is: barcodes, license plates, lot codes, expiration dates, quantities, damage, and location occupancy, plus a high-resolution photo of every location. Because Vision reads images rather than listening for a scanner beep or detecting RFID, it handles degraded, crossed-out, and glare-covered barcodes, and uses optical character recognition (OCR) to capture printed and handwritten lot and date codes. You configure which elements matter for your operation, and every capture is stored as searchable photographic proof.
How does Gather AI count cases?
Gather AI counts cases on each pallet directly from imagery, including partial layers and partial pallets, then compares the count against your WMS and flags mismatches automatically. There are two modes. Standard (2D) case counting reads the pallet’s stacking pattern (cases per layer and layers high) from the front face. The 3D Case Count fuses multiple angles, including head-on and top-down, to count cases on complex, irregular, or mixed-SKU pallets, with photographic proof for every count. Variance thresholds are configurable per site, product, or customer SLA.
How are the results of a Gather AI Vision count delivered?
Results land in your Gather AI Sage after each mission: every location with its photo, its captured data, and a prioritized exception list ready to filter, assign, and resolve.
Can Gather AI handle double-deep racking?
Yes. For double-deep racking, Gather AI uses multi-angle imaging, head-on plus top-down, to capture what sits behind the front pallet when there is clearance above the load. No vision system can see through a pallet, so coverage design matters. During the site walkthrough, the team maps which areas multi-angle drone scans cover well and which are better served by MHE Vision, so every location ends up with a reliable capture method.
Does Gather AI work in bulk or floor-stacked storage?
Yes. Gather AI MHE Vision is purpose-built for it, and it is the capture method we recommend for bulk, floor-stacked, and staged areas. Bulk storage changes constantly and has no fixed location IDs to scan against. MHE Vision captures each pallet at the moment a forklift touches it, so the record updates on the event itself rather than waiting for the next scheduled pass. In block-stacked areas, it also reaches what a fly-over or drive-by scan cannot, because the truck handling the pallet sees it directly instead of reading the outside of the stack. Because Gather AI is software first and offers dynamic form factors, each area of the building gets matched to the right modality. Racked storage runs Drone Vision, bulk and open floor run MHE Vision, and both feed the same platform and the same dashboard.
What happens if a pallet label is missing or facing away?
Gather AI Vision photographs the location, attempts OCR and other fallback identifiers, and flags it for review rather than silently skipping it. Front-facing labels give the highest read rates, and most customers, with support from their Gather AI account team, tighten pallet-facing hygiene ahead of go-live. Gather AI Vision is intelligent enough to read degraded, scratched, and partially obscured barcodes that aren’t detected by conventional scanners. Anything unresolved surfaces as an exception with a photo attached in the dashboard, so nothing disappears after the count undetected.
Can Gather AI detect damaged product?
Yes. Gather AI flags damaged cases and pallets and routes them to the right team with photo evidence. During onboarding, the model is trained on what damage looks like for your specific products, and it keeps improving the longer it runs. Damage definitions and thresholds are configurable.
How does the system reconcile counts against the system of record?
Gather AI Sage compares every scan against your WMS records, expected versus physical, and surfaces discrepancies as an exception report with photos: count mismatches, unexpected pallets, and locations that should be full but are empty or the reverse. Your team resolves exceptions in the dashboard or directly in the WMS, so you’re never chasing missing product.
Drone Vision
What is Gather AI Drone Vision?
Drone Vision is the Gather AI Vision form factor for racked storage. An autonomous drone flies a scheduled mission through the aisles, captures every pallet position, and lands, with no pilot and no one walking the floor. Captures are stored onboard during the mission and sync to the cloud when the drone returns to coverage. Gather AI compares each one against your WMS and posts the result to the dashboard, with the photograph attached as proof.
How many locations can a drone scan per hour?
A single Gather AI drone scans hundreds of pallet locations per hour. How much of a facility that covers in one mission depends on location count, rack configuration, label quality, and scan type, since 3D case counting captures two images per position. Coverage for your building is modeled during scoping. Across deployments, customers see counts up to 25x faster than manual methods.
How many drones does a facility typically need?
While some facilities run on a single drone, the right number depends on location count, rack configuration, and how often you want each location read. Sites of a million square feet and up, or operations that want multiple counts per day, typically add drones and Battery Swapper stations. Fleet size is set by a coverage study during scoping rather than by square footage alone.
Can Drone Vision missions be scheduled by zone or overnight?
Yes. Missions are scheduled by zone, aisle, or full facility at whatever frequency you set, including nightly, weekly, overnight, and weekends. High-priority areas like pick faces can be scanned more often than reserve storage. Most customers run full-facility counts during off-shifts, so flights never interfere with active operations.
How long can a Gather AI drone fly?
As long as the mission takes. With the Battery Swapper installed, a drone counts continuously rather than stopping to recharge. Facilities without a Swapper use a mobile cart stocked with pre-charged batteries for quick manual changes.
What is the Gather AI Battery Swapper?
The Battery Swapper is an autonomous station that changes a Gather AI drone battery with nobody touching it, in under two minutes. When the Mark II drone detects a low battery, it pauses the mission and navigates to the station. The Swapper does the exchange, then the drone returns to the position where it stopped and resumes counting. That is what makes lights-out cycle counting practical, since a mission is no longer capped by one battery or by someone being on hand to change it. The stations are compact and mobile, and placement is planned with you during deployment.
How does the drone navigate through the facility?
Gather AI drones navigate autonomously using small fiducial tags called ArUco markers, similar to QR codes, placed on the racking during deployment. The deployment team maps your facility and places the tags at roughly one per pallet position. They sit alongside your existing rack labels rather than replacing them.
Is it safe to fly drones around people and forklift traffic?
Yes. Drones sense and avoid obstacles with onboard LiDAR and vision, and standard operating procedure closes the active aisle with retractable barriers during flight. If someone needs to enter the aisle – for a hot pick, for example – the operator taps a button on the tablet, the drone executes a safety landing, and the mission resumes from its last known position afterward. Facilities are mapped for hazards during deployment, and the drone automatically holds a hover or lands if it detects an anomaly mid-mission.
What temperatures can the drones operate in?
Drone Vision operates from 130°F down to -10°F, covering ambient, cooler, and freezer environments.
MHE Vision
What is Gather AI MHE Vision?
MHE Vision is Gather AI's forklift-mounted capture. Cameras mount to the material handling equipment already running in your facility, so pallet capture happens as a byproduct of the work your team is already doing. On putaway, MHE Vision confirms the pallet and the location match and alerts the operator in the moment if one lands in the wrong slot. On pickup, it verifies the right pallet left the right location.
What can MHE Vision detect?
MHE Vision reads labels and validates put-aways and picks in real time, alerting the operator the moment a mis-placement happens. It detects mis-slotting and damage, distinguishes front from rear positions in double-deep racking, and tracks pallets from parent to child as they move to the pick face.
We already barcode-scan to locations. What does MHE Vision add?
A scan only confirms a pallet ID at a moment in time; MHE Vision verifies the entire movement with visual proof – right pallet, right location, right condition – and catches the errors scans miss, like a pallet set in the wrong slot or a damaged case loaded anyway. It also removes scan steps so operators move faster, and every transaction carries a photo that settles disputes and audits in seconds.
Which forklifts are compatible, and can MHE Vision be retrofitted onto existing trucks?
Yes; MHE Vision retrofits onto existing trucks, whatever you might have in your fleet. It is in production today on Crown, Raymond, Toyota, and Hyster equipment. For makes we have not integrated before, we work directly with the OEM, typically over two to three months, to make sure power connections do not void your warranty.
How does Gather AI attribute work to individual forklift operators?
Gather AI handles attribution through the on-vehicle tablet. Operators log in at the start of every run, before any work begins, so the session is tied to the person rather than the truck. Assignments can change between shifts and every action stays attributed to the operator who performed it.
Integrations
Which WMS systems do you integrate with?
Gather AI integrates with any WMS or ERP that exposes an API or file interface – including Manhattan, Blue Yonder, and SAP (ECC, EWM, and S/4HANA). Integrations run over real-time APIs or scheduled flat-file/CSV exchange, whichever fits your systems team. No integration is required to start: many customers begin with a simple WMS extract feeding the dashboard and add live integration later.
Are WMS updates automatic and in real time?
Yes. With API integration, validated transactions post back to your WMS as they complete. For example, an MHE-verified put-away writes back the moment it happens, as a single transaction or batched, depending on what system setup. Drone Vision counts sync automatically after each mission, with processing typically completing within minutes of the drone landing.
How do floor teams use Gather AI alongside their existing systems?
Gather AI has two surfaces, and both work alongside the systems your teams already use. Tablets sit at the point of work. On material handling equipment (MHE Vision), the tablet presents pickup and putaway workflows and validates each move as it happens. For Drone Vision, the tablet is where missions are scheduled and launched. The web dashboard, Sage, is where results get reviewed: every location with its capture, the data read from it, and the prioritized exception list. Inventory teams work from it on their own schedule. The platform complements your WMS rather than replacing it.
Deployment
How long does implementation take?
Weeks, not months. Gather AI deploys at an average of roughly 14,000 racked pallet locations per week, so a first estimate is your location count divided by 14,000.
What does a facility need before Gather AI can deploy?
Gather AI takes on most of the setup. The deployment team places the ArUco navigation markers on your racking, Vision runs on commercial drones and on the forklift fleet you already have, and nothing gets wired into the aisles for power or charging. What you provide is connectivity, Wi-Fi 5 or better or LTE, so captures reach your dashboards. On the physical side, drone capture needs racked inventory with scannable labels, aisle widths of roughly 4 feet 5 inches or wider, and space for the charging or Battery Swapper station (optional add-on). Bulk and open-floor areas run MHE Vision instead. A site walkthrough and coverage study during scoping confirms fit. Gather AI provides IT requirements documentation ahead of deployment and meets with your site IT team to work through it.
Do we have to shut down operations to deploy Gather AI?
No. Deployment and scanning both happen without disrupting active operations. Missions run inside defined operational windows alongside live work, so your team stays on fulfillment while the floor gets read.
Who runs Gather AI day to day?
Your existing inventory or operations team. Gather AI is autonomous, so it is not a project you hire for. Vision captures on its own, Sage reasons across the data, and Workflows routes each exception to the person who owns it. Missions are selected on a tablet, results are reviewed in the dashboard, and a named customer success manager supports the account throughout.
Security and IT
What IT infrastructure is required on-site?
Very little. Gather AI requires no on-premises servers. Drones store captures onboard during the mission, so aisle-by-aisle Wi-Fi coverage is not required for flight. Moving those captures to the cloud does need connectivity: LTE or 5G, or Wi-Fi 5 at minimum. MHE Vision kits run on the vehicle tablet. IT involvement is typically a network review and integration endpoints.
Where does Gather AI host our data?
Gather AI hosts your data in the cloud in a dedicated, per-customer container. Mission files, images, and WMS feeds are isolated to your organization and reached through your portal. Data is encrypted in transit with TLS 1.2 or higher and encrypted at rest, running on a dual-cloud infrastructure across Azure and AWS. Access runs on single sign-on with SAML or OIDC and two-factor authentication, with role-based permissions governing service-to-service access. Gather AI retains a rolling 12 months for every customer, so how far back you can look is not limited by storage. Full security documentation is shared during evaluation.
Who owns the data Gather AI collects?
You do. Your data and images are yours, accessible through your portal and available for export or API access into your own systems at any time.
Is Gather AI ISO 27001 certified?
Gather AI is ISO 27001 certified. Full security documentation is shared during evaluation.
How we compare
How is Gather AI different from other warehouse inventory vision vendors?
We differ across a few distinct areas. First, Gather AI is software first, so the intelligence sits in the platform rather than in a piece of hardware. Vision runs on drones and on forklift-mounted cameras, using commercial off-the-shelf components, so each area of a building gets the capture method that suits it and the platform evolves independently of any hardware lifecycle. Most vendors in this space build their own hardware, which ties the customer to that roadmap. Depth of capture is the second difference. Gather AI parses more than ten data points from every image, including location, occupancy, condition, and case count, so you are verifying what is in a location rather than logging that something is there. The third is the closed loop. Vision captures, Sage reasons across your systems, and Workflows routes the action, all in one platform rather than capturing data and handing it to someone else's analytics.
How is Gather AI different from our WMS analytics tool?
Gather AI supplies data that does not exist anywhere else, which is what is physically there right now, with a photograph behind it. We supplement your system of record with a system of reality.
What awards and recognition has Gather AI received?
Gather AI was named one of three vendors worldwide in Gartner's Coolest Vendor Innovations in Cross-Functional Supply Chain Technology (2026), under the header Physical AI for Intralogistics. Gather AI was also named in two 2025 Gartner Hype Cycles, for AI-Enabled Vision Systems and for Autonomous Data Collection and Inspection. Beyond analyst recognition, Gather AI was named to Fast Company's World's Most Innovative Companies of 2026, appears on CB Insights' 2025 list of the 100 most innovative AI startups, received a 2025 Inc. Power Partner Award in Operations and Logistics, and was named to Inc.'s 2026 list of the fastest-growing private companies in the Northeast. Gartner, Coolest Vendor Innovations in Cross-Functional Supply Chain Technology (2026), 24 July 2026. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications.
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