Cal Poly industrial engineering graduate student Tyler Luby Howard has earned national recognition for research focused on balancing human labor and autonomous mobile robots in modern warehouses.
Luby Howard received the Facilities Design and Planning Track Best Paper Award for the 2026 Annual Conference of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers. He will present the research in May in Arlington, Texas.
Co-authored with his thesis adviser, industrial engineering professor Mohamed Awwad, the paper focuses on picker-to-parts warehouse systems and the role autonomous mobile robots, or AMRs, can play in improving efficiency. Luby Howard’s award-winning paper, “Fleet Sizing for Collaborative AMRs in Progressive Zoning Picker-to-Parts Warehouses,” looks at how companies can determine the right mix of workers and robots as automation becomes more common across the logistics industry.
What he found was a more complicated picture, one in which adding more machines does not always lead to better performance.
Using simulation and mathematical modeling, he studied how different combinations of workers and robots perform under changing warehouse conditions. His findings show that the most effective balance shifts based on factors such as order volume, facility layout and the cost of the robotic systems. The research also identifies a point at which adding more robots can begin to reduce performance rather than improve it.
“This work is about helping organizations make better, more informed decisions as they adopt advanced technologies,” Luby Howard said. “It’s not just about adding automation. It’s about integrating it in a way that truly improves system performance.”
The project forms the foundation of Luby Howard’s master’s thesis, which he will defend in June 2026. Along with presenting at the IISE conference, he is preparing a journal manuscript to share the findings with both academic and industry audiences.
Luby Howard’s recognition reflects Cal Poly’s Learn by Doing approach, where students engage in applied research tied to real industry questions. His work sits at the intersection of industrial engineering, automation and human-centered systems design, fields that are playing an increasingly important role in the future of supply chains.
