Fetch Robotics' Melonee Wise with her new fully autonomous bot and cart. For more than a century, factories and warehouses have depended on forklifts to move heavy objects from one place to another.

Melonee Wise, CEO and co-founder of Fetch Robotics, the five-year-old automation-as-a-service startup, describes herself as a “robotics pessimist,” which alone sets her apart in a high tech culture ...