Leveraging Warehouse Robotics
Maximizing storage density, improving picking dexterity, and gaining prowess through artificial intelligence, these robotic innovations and recent deployments are enabling new levels of warehouse efficiency.
Pudu Robotics Makes Smart Warehouse Moves
Pudu Robotics’ first robot for industrial applications, the PUDU T300, can deftly navigate industrial facilities such as warehouses and factories.
Engineered for material logistics in discrete manufacturing, the PUDU T300 can streamline operations by delivering supplies to production lines, transferring materials across production zones, and facilitating the transport of samples for quality checks.
With a map-and-go feature, the T300 offers quick deployment and integration into existing workflows, operating independently of network connectivity and without the need for environmental modifications.
Yale Lift Truck Technologies Offers Long-Distance Pulling
The Yale MO150T automated tugger can be configured to pull different types and numbers of carts, providing a solution for a variety of repetitive warehouse tasks that require large loads to be hauled over long distances.
The 15,000-pound capacity solution can handle tasks including stock replenishment and materials hauling, transporting product between conveyors and kitting separate items to be supplied as one unit.
Rather than a retrofit or one-off solution, automation components are installed during the manufacturing process, offering an integrated package for convenience and product consistency. The truck can be easily switched between automated and manual modes with a button push.
Getting a Better Grip
Adaptive robot maker Flexiv designed the Grav Enhanced Gripper to handle mixed SKU consignments in a warehouse setting. The gripper combines two-finger adaptive pinching and a gecko-inspired superfriction material, enabling it to handle any object weighing up to 11 pounds. From soccer balls to champagne bottles, and loose clothing to foam, it can get a grip.
Deus AMRs Utilize Artificial Intelligence
AI-powered autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) from Deus Robotics can cover up to 90% of warehouse automation needs, including automating 90% of picking and storage operations. With a typical runtime of 8 hours and autonomous charging of 1.5 hours, they can move up-to-2,645-pound loads at a speed of 7.2 feet per second.
Equipped with an AI-powered navigation system, Deus AMRs can transport racks following an optimal route, boosting warehouse efficiency by an estimated 300%. The robots can help reduce labor costs and increase throughput while providing scalability and quick integration.
Locus Robotics Coordinates AMR Fleets
Locus Robotics’ real-time, business intelligence engine, LocusHub optimizes real-time coordination of Locus AMR fleets. LocusHub offers reporting capabilities, which process operational data and forecast labor requirements, identify potential optimization opportunities, and provide proactive recommendations to help operators efficiently manage operations.
As a component of the LocusOne platform, it harnesses advanced analytics, AI, and machine learning to deliver predictive and prescriptive insights to maximize productivity, lower costs, and improve warehouse intelligence.
Boston Dynamics Adds a Humanoid to Its Lineup
Boston Dynamics introduced a new mobile robot—a fully electric Atlas robot designed for real-world applications. (The company retired its hydraulic Atlas.) The humanoid robot will first be tested by automaker Hyundai at its manufacturing facilities.
Though it has a human form factor, the Atlas robot is not constrained by a human range of motion. It’s designed to move in the most efficient way possible to complete tasks.
Boston Dynamics also offers package handling robot Stretch, which provides predictability for warehouse operations. With the ability to move hundreds of cases an hour, Stretch ensures daily goals are met even when order fulfillment demands soar.
Stretch can handle a wide range of package types and sizes, up to 50 pounds. The robot can navigate typical container conditions, working its way through neat or messy box configurations.
Kassow Robots Integrates Controllers
Kassow Robots launched a 7-axis cobot series with a controller integrated into the base of the robot, allowing for greater flexibility for mobile solutions and additional space savings for facilities.
All five of its 7-axis cobots are now available in two versions: the standard version with a separate controller and the Edge Edition with integrated controller.
The Kassow engineering team miniaturized the controller so that it now occupies around 10% of the volume of the external controller. These compact cobot models are powered by direct current, meaning they can be directly connected to any DC power supply, for example a battery of mobile robots.
The lightweight robots open up new opportunities for mobile cobot AMR and cobot AGV (automated guided vehicle) applications and space-saving solutions.
Kollmorgen’s NDC Flex Combines AMRs and AGVs
Kollmorgen now offers a flexible automation solution for warehouses: NDC Flex. Kollmorgen’s NDC Flex is a platform that consists of both software to manage fleets and route vehicles efficiently, and hardware for navigation and control. NDC Flex lets companies combine the efficiency of AGVs with the adaptability of AMRs.
This hybrid approach supports peak site productivity and mitigates risks related to potential disruptions. For example, NDC Flex users can modify the warehouse layout using a cloud-based solution called the Cirrus tool. Cirrus enables system providers to synchronize and validate end user changes, simplifying collaboration.
Additionally, NDC Flex vehicles are equipped with obstacle avoidance technology. This capability allows the vehicle to maneuver around objects and obstacles and continue along its designated path.
$5.6 Billion
The estimated global revenue of mobile robots in 2024, according to Ash Sharma, chief commercial officer and VP of research – robotics and warehouse automation at Interact Analysis.
The market intelligence research company cut its forecast for 2024 due to a slowdown in China. Despite this deceleration, growth in the U.S. market is expected to help propel global revenues to reach $5.6 billion for the year. In 2023, the mobile robot market grew by 27% to amass $4.5 billion globally.
Comau’s Piece Picking Robot Boosts Precision
Comau introduced the newest solution in its Machine Inspection Recognition Archetypes (MI.RA) family of hardware-agnostic, intelligent vision systems—the MI.RA/OnePicker.
Comau’s new perception-based piece picking solution pairs vision technology with advanced sensors to pick randomly displaced objects after calculating the picking pose in seconds.
The compact and lightweight robot vision guidance system determines the most effective way to empty a bin while saving costs and lowering potential risks.
MI.RA/OnePicker is designed to autonomously pick miscellaneous objects from the same bin without relying on CAD-based assistance or prior information about their size, shape, color, or characteristics. AI-enabled and adaptable to any brand of commercial robot, customized bin, or customized gripper, the MI.RA solution is ideal for pick and place, kitting, sorting, warehouse, ecommerce, and similar applications.
With virtual simulation tools and predictive algorithms that provide path management and collision-free trajectories, the MI.RA/OnePicker ensures precision and repeatable performance. It can be installed on even the smallest collaborative robots without limiting its reachability inside the bins.
Pio Warehouse Robotics System Enters the U.S. SMB Market
Pio (“Products In/Out”), a plug-and-play automated warehouse system leveraging cube storage technology by AutoStore, is now available to small and midsize ecommerce businesses (SMBs) in the United States.
AutoStore is a warehouse automation company with more than 1,500 installations worldwide for companies such as Macy’s, Ikea, and Puma. Its proprietary cube storage technology offers one of the densest product and inventory storage solutions on the market.
AutoStore created Pio to make cube storage technology accessible to companies of all sizes. Now, Pio’s P100 automated warehouse system has launched in the United States with five new customers including Privada Cigar Club, Sunday Swagger, Souko, Barnes 4WD, and AI Stone.
Starting at around $86,000 plus a monthly subscription, Pio is capable of picking and packing 360 orders per hour, reducing labor costs by up to 80% and saving hundreds of thousands of dollars per year for SMB ecommerce businesses. To date, Pio customers have reported a full return-on-investment (ROI) in less than one year.
500 Million Picks
DHL reached the milestone of 500 million picks using Locus Robotics’ LocusBot autonomous mobile robots. The 500 millionth pick occurred on May 18, 2024, at DHL’s Toledo, Spain, facility, where a LocusBot retrieved a consumer home goods product.
While it took 2.5 years for DHL to reach the first 10 million picks, the next 100 million picks were accomplished in 28 months. The last 100 million picks took 154 days. LocusBots are deployed at more than 35 DHL-managed sites worldwide.
Urbx Robotic Inventory System Maximizes Density
Urbx launched a robotic inventory storage and retrieval system capable of fulfilling complex, multi-SKU orders at high speeds.
The system builds on traditional automated storage and retrieval systems (AS/RS) and uses a combination of robotics, software, and storage racking to offer advantages in speed, height, density, and scalability in goods-to-person order fulfillment workflows.
Designed for ecommerce warehouses, retail and grocery fulfillment, the system uses a fleet of proprietary Urbx TowerBots driven by AI to find the shortest 3D path through a dense storage grid to retrieve totes and bring them out to a pick station. TowerBots move across the top of the racking and drop down through strategically located columns to access inventory.
This storage grid design requires no navigating aisles or digging to access totes below top storage layers, enabling access to inventory at all levels—stacked up to 75 totes high—in seconds.
TowerBots then move totes down through those same columns to built-in conveyor tiles for transport to order fulfillment and consolidation. The Urbx system can support accelerated fulfillment speeds; it is capable of fulfilling a 50-line order in less than 2.5 minutes.
Apparel Distributor S&S Fashions More Robot Solutions
S&S Activewear, an apparel distributor, increased the deployment of Geekplus robotics solutions and expanded its partnership with Körber Supply Chain at three warehouse sites across the Americas.
The partnership starts with the deployment of 340 Geekplus robots at a single 750,000-square-foot S&S site in Lockport, Illinois, marking the largest collaboration in Körber’s robotics portfolio.
Geekplus’s PopPick robotics solutions optimize warehouse processes, moving inventory stored in totes to pick stations. The system incorporates autonomous mobility and slotting of inventory for an efficient workflow.
The system is designed to support more than 4,500 lines per hour through 24 picking stations. Since the inception of the partnership, S&S Activewear has logged increased speed and efficiency in warehouse operations, order fulfillment, and quality assurance.
Arvato Augments Automation and Shoots for Warehouse Autonomy
Supply chain and ecommerce service provider Arvato is increasing the targeted use of robots in its logistics centers, with plans to scale automation in the near future and even more ambitiously, build an autonomous warehouse with self-improving capabilities.
1. justPick Fulfills Orders
At its location in Dortmund, Germany, where it operates a distribution center for several fashion clients, Arvato deployed the robotic solution justPick from robot specialist Nomagic. As part of the AutoStore Port Picking pilot project, the robot is used to pick individual item orders from the fully automated AutoStore warehouse. It fulfills customers’ orders as well as replenishes the AutoStore system.
Arvato currently operates 10 AutoStore systems worldwide and looks to scale the robotic solution. Further applications at shuttle storage workstations and for pocket sorter loading are also planned.
2. Bucky Is a Marvel
Arvato launched a palletizing robot—nicknamed Bucky after Marvel superhero Bucky Barnes—at its site in Venlo in the Netherlands.
Part of the inbound process, Bucky not only palletizes boxes from loose loaded containers, but also wraps the pallet and applies the tracking label.
Bucky, supplied by automation specialist Segbert, can grip multiple boxes at the same time with its vacuum gripper and process between 700 and 3,000 cartons per hour, depending on their size.
With this robotic solution, Arvato continues to move toward a fully automated inbound and putaway process—with Boston Dynamics’ Stretch in the container, Bucky for scanning, palletizing, and packing as well as AGVs for storage in the pallet shuttle.
3. Moonshot Aims High
In its most ambitious initiative, Arvato joins forces with Microsoft to develop a self-managing warehouse, dubbing the research project “Moonshot.”
The project aims to implement self-improving processes within the warehouse environment by leveraging generative artificial intelligence, robotics, and cloud computing.
Showing initial use cases for Moonshot at the Gartner Supply Chain Symposium/Xpo 2024 in June, the companies are looking beyond automating individual processes and toward the creation of an autonomous warehouse.
One use case optimizes picking routes using AI to reorganize task orders through rapid data analysis, enhancing navigation for pickers. Another use case involves AI-controlled interpretation of carrier responses in transport complaints. The AI Smart Layer interprets these responses and independently triggers appropriate actions in the claim management tool.
4 Must Do’s for Deploying Warehouse Robotics
By Kate McAfoose, President and Partner, Chang Robotics
Here are four best practices for using robotics to optimize your warehouse and logistics operations:
Integrate with a Warehouse Execution System (WES): Remember your robotics functions represent one component in a holistic warehouse system. Create a seamless integration of your robotics functions with the warehouse management software and IT systems you currently use or that you plan to acquire.
Make It Ripe for the Picking—and collaborating. Look for robotics support for picking solutions for error-proof parts picking, kitting, assembly, sequencing, and other materials handling operations. Keep an eye towards cobotics (collaborative robotics)—the ability to maximize the interplay between humans and robots for optimal effectiveness, such as advanced displays for assembly instructions and optimal visuals for continual monitoring.
Enhance Human Work with Automation. Many of the most successful robotics implementations integrate robotic systems designed to work alongside humans, making their roles more productive and efficient. These solutions include autonomous mobile robots, pick-to-light carts that can operate alongside human workers, and other automation infrastructure. These combinations increase efficiency and help address labor challenges.
Seek Scalability. As you consider robotics implementation, remember you are not necessarily looking to replace current functions, but to scale them. Prioritize the solutions that can integrate and grow with your WMS/MES/ERP system and materials handling equipment. This step can help to ensure a smooth implementation process, while also easing the path to future scalability.