Review | DHL Supply Chain Team Visited VisionNav Robotics for further cooperation

DHL is one of the best contract logistics suppliers in the world, who has always been a strong supporter of innovation and change in logistics industry. On October 30, DHL Supply Chain sent a team to visit VisionNav Robotics at the headquarters in Shenzhen. During the visit, Dr. Fang Mu, the CTO of Visoinnav Robotics, introduced their unmanned products and business mode to DHL team. Deepening cooperation between two parties can be expected soon.

Figure: DHL Supply Chain team visited VisionNav Robotics

"VisionNav Robotics have profound technology research & development and long-term project experience in the field of vision-guided unmanned forklift." Representative from delegation team affirmed the professionalism of VisionNav Robotics visual AI technology, and asked about efficiency and safety of unmanned forklift technology when replacing labor. “It involves a large number of goods detection and information reading processes. Although the efficiency of unmanned forklift cannot reach the level of manual handling, by 24/7 longtime working with high efficiency, it can meet the total needs of inbound and outbound in warehousing companies" Dr. Fang Mu also introduced the unique safety protection module in their forklifts, which can effectively avoid obstacles. Up to now, all launched forklifts in operations are in good conditions and they can effectively adapt to a variety of complex scenarios, providing a large number of data precipitation and scenario reference for the diverse needs of subsequent users.

Figure: Dr. Fang Mu, the Vice General Manager of VisionNav Robotics

Figure: DHL Supply Chain Delegation Team

Later, the delegation team visited the unmanned warehouse of VisionNav Robotics for the handling demonstration. Dr Fang highlighted their vision navigation module, a visual camera on top of the vehicle. Unmanned forklift perceives environment through visual information. It saves various environmental information as offline map, and compares the information between real-time image and offline map during operation to locate and navigate. A seemingly simple unmanned forklift in fact integrates the most cutting edge technologies including AI vision, servo control and cloud storage, making it the most promising industrial robot in the market.

Figure: DHL Supply Chain Delegation Team at VisionNav Robotics Unmanned Warehouse

Video: DHL Supply Chain Delegation Team Visited VisionNav Robotics

DHL has been a long-term partner of VisionNav Robotics. In the previous cooperation, VisionNav Robotics has provided intelligent warehousing proposal for DHL bonded warehouse. It takes about 2 months to import the project. It can seamlessly integrate to the existing WMS system and realize multi-machine collaborative unmanned operation, avoiding the danger of high level shelf operation and improving the warehousing efficiency by more than 20%. The visit of further enhanced mutual trust between DHL and VisionNav Robotics, and increase the possibility of international business cooperation.

 

Review | VisionNav Robotics First Show With Its New Technology in CeMAT 2019

2019 CeMAT Asia attracted over 120,000 professional audiences and visitors from Germany, the United States, Russia, the United Kingdoms, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Israel and other countries and regions. Under the series theme of “Smart Drive, Smart Logistics”, the show presented advanced innovation technological achievements and solutions in domestic and international logistics fields. As a pioneer domestic company in the field of vision navigation industrial driverless vehicle, VisionNav Robotics unveiled its unmanned solution to stack four layer cages, making the booth highly popular and crowded.

Glimpse of New Trends in Smart Logistics at CeMAT

With the rapid development of economy and e-commerce, the word "Smart Logistics" has frequently become the hot search in the major media in recent years. With the explosion of orders, consumers require a higher level of logistics efficiency and service quality. Thus warehouse logistics companies started to explore more advanced and applicable devices and methods to increase logistics operation efficiency and safety.

In CeMAT, major brands have emerged. Both industrial robot giants and smart logistics new-comers have launched their new products based on AI technology. From this exhibition, we can see logistics industry empowered by AI technology has shown great potential. Application of AI visual technology in information storage, transportation and picking & sorting fields, which represents the future development trend, is also becoming mature. There are huge breakthroughs and major leaps in product maturity in particularly.

Figure: Automated stacking technology based on vision navigation

Unmanned Stacking Solution from VisionNav Robotics Attracts Great Attentions

As early as August 2019, the unmanned multi-layer cages stacking solution from VisionNav Robotics has made its debut in the automotive manufacturing area. It has attracted plenty attentions and favors of many intelligent manufacturing and storage companies. The public appearance of this solution represents another breakthrough and upgrade of VisionNav Robotics unmanned forklifts in precise stacking application.

During the show, VisionNav Robotics in particular presented the demonstration of cages picking at random locations and stacking to high-level. Even customer move the position and angle of the cage randomly, the unmanned forklift can still adjust itself to pick and stack the cages accurately. “In the complex stacking scenarios, it requires more flexibility when connecting automated equipment and manual operations. For unmanned forklift, such flexibility is the self-adaption and self-corrective ability to pallets and cages hat is randomly displaced by human.” Officials from VisionNav Robotics introduced that the self-adaptive cage stacking operation integrates spatial perception, pallet detection and servo control techniques, which can help more intelligent manufacturing companies, especially auto parts manufacturer a more safer, reliable and cost-effective storage experience.

Video: 60 second review of VisionNav Robotics

Driven by Capital and Tech, Smart Forklift Segmentation Develops Rapidly

From overall industrial structure, when smart logistics continues to do well in 2019, some segments have also entered a new ear, and industry segmentation has begun to take shape. Compared to 2018, number of exhibitors who present unmanned forklifts in this exhibition has accounted for half. As the most needed vehicles in the industry, we can see forklifts still play a pivotal role in the logistics industry.

The emergence at largely of unmanned forklifts this year is mainly motivated by both capital and technology. With the breakthrough and application of vision technology, unmanned forklift manufacturers with independent development capabilities are increasingly favored by the capitals. During the exhibition, multiple investment institutions visited VisionNav Robotics, consulted in detail about their products and solutions, and gave favorable comments on the deployment of the product and market at strategic levels get

The multi-layer cage stacking solution showed in this exhibition is an active attempt for VisionNav Robotics to enter unmanned forklift competition in high-end market. In the next few years, VisionNav Robotics will launch more and more unmanned industrial vehicles such as unmanned cranes, airport tractors, etc. In compliance with the wish of "liberating global industrial vehicles", VisionNav Robotics will continue to further explore. Future and  VisionNav Robotics can both be expected!

VisionNav Robotics, Leader of Vision Navigation Unmanned Industrial Vehicles

VisionNav Robotics, Leader of Vision Navigation Unmanned Industrial Vehicles

Author: Huang Manting from xzlrobot.com

Founded in 2016 by a team of professor and D.Eng. from the Chinese university of Hong Kong, VisionNav Robotics becomes the dark horse in mobile robot (AGV) industry in China With world-leading vision navigation technology and strong explosiveness, it takes only 3 years to reach turnover of over 50 million RMB, which attracts tremendous attentions.

Focusing on vision navigation with different technologies

Compared to other AGV navigation such as magnetic, QR code and laser, there are three core advantages for vision navigation.

1）Strong Usability: Visual camera can obtain rich information such as color, texture, etc. These can help mobile robots to achieve effective positioning, controlling and perception in natural environment. It can greatly improve operation efficiency, accuracy and stability, as well as reduce project installation difficulties and shorten onsite installation time. Compared to other navigation methods, vision navigation from VisionNav Robotics can adapt to complex scenarios in the demand of customer’s regular use. For example, deformed racks or pallets after long-time use, large proportion of oversize goods, unpredictable transportation needs with periodical surge, vehicle dispatching and scheduling in narrow space, etc.

2）Wide applicability: Adding modularized vision navigation technology to industrial vehicles can easily realize unmanned transformation and upgrade. At present, VisionNav Robotics can work with over 180 industrial vehicles from 6 brands.

3）Cost-effective：

Cost advantage of vision sensors has significantly reduced the price of the product. The price of industrial camera from world’s top-level supplier is around 3000 RMB, which is 10%-20% of the price of same level laser sensors. Therefore, in terms of ROI or payback period for end customer, there is an obvious advantage for vision navigation unmanned industrial vehicles.

It takes 9 year (6 years before company establishment and 3 years after) for VisionNav Robotics team to make “unmanned industrial vehicles driven by vision navigation technology” in the worldwide. The vision navigation unmanned industrial vehicle modules and vehicle scheduling system self-developed by the team lead the standards of underlying positioning, perception and control logic in international robotics technologies. There is extremely strong product competitiveness in both domestic and global market.

Dr. Li Luyang, co-founder of VisionNav Robotic told reporter from xzlrobot.com in an interview earlier, that “VisionNav Robotics is still working on vision navigation technology at the current stage. By improving the information acquisition ability and information transmission speed, vision and motion of industrial vehicles can be combined in a more perfect way, which can further improve the easy-to-use, applicability and cost-effectiveness, and promote the inflection point of industry.

https://v.qq.com/x/page/e3015x52h3y.html

Video: Mr. Li Luyang from VisionNav Robotics interviewed by reporter from xzlrobot.com

Lead globally in vision unmanned industrial vehicles area with large amount of applications in head customers

VisionNav Robotics is a company providing a platform to do unmanned transform and upgrade to industrial vehicles. Their business includes unmanned industrial vehicles development and transformation in production lines, warehouses, logistics parks, airports and other semi-structured scenarios. It is reported that vision navigation unmanned industrial vehicles from VisionNav Robotics have been applied successfully in over 30 sites from industrial head customers.

There are 2 advantages of VisionNav Robotics, which will keep the leading in vision navigation unmanned industrial vehicle area.

（1）   Technical accumulation. For 9 years VisionNav Robotics has been working on vision navigation field in depth. With the help of their world-class team they will continue to increase spending in vision navigation R&D in the next 3 years to build higher technical barrier. “The responsibility of leading enterprises in the industry is to promote the appearance of industry explosion breaking point. VisionNav Robotics is make its own efforts. Whether there is explosion breaking point for vision navigation in the fields of unmanned industrial vehicle, the decisive factor is not market demands, but technology and product. It is fair enough to say that there are no any unmanned industrial vehicles of any companies worldwide can fully meet the customer's requirement on efficiency, function, cost, and vehicle reformation.Therefore we will not feel any comfort for the current situation, instead we should increase the investment on R&D, strive forward with our whole heart and mind and never stop working deeply on vision navigation and products until our technology and project can fully meet customer’s requirement.” Dr. Li Luyang emphasized in the interview.

（2）   The landing of mature business mode helps to accumulate rich project experience. Vision navigation unmanned industrial vehicles and systems from VisionNav Robotics is known to apply successfully in many fields including ecommerce logistics, retail logistics, bonded logistics, FMCG, automotive manufacturing, new energy, and so on. More than 60% of their customers are the world’s top 500 companies. VisionNav Robotics can provide solutions for complex scenarios, many of them are industry first and advanced, such as 9.4m high level unmanned loading on racks, self-adaption picking and placing goods technology, real-time positioning with correction technology. These can creatively solve the difficulties to automatically transport irregular parts. During 2019 CeMat Asia, VisionNav Robotics exhibited their vision navigation control module, and the world’s first highly precise stacking solution of multiple cages. “In our industry, all valuable technologies and products need to be precipitated and excavated by a large amount of customer requirements and application scenarios, then force engineers to verify their R&D result in customer actual requirement and applications, then again force back the engineer for continuous iteration. If you only make a laboratory prototype or only deploy at 1-2 customer sites, there is still a long distance for volume production, because you may even understand the actual requirement of your customer. The advantage of VisionNav Robotics lies in technology and product continuous iteration via large numbers of customer sites and applications. Their R&D team nevel alienate themselves from their customer to optimize products at the gradient directions, so that they can do at fastest speed of growth with highest efficiency.” Explained by Dr. Li Luyang about his thought of the relationship between customer needs and R&D.

Video: Onsite Application of Vision Navigation UnmannedIndustrial Vehicles from VisionNav Robotics

As for the development in the future, Dr. Li Luyang said “the easiness, adaptability and cost-effectiveness of vision navigation technology needs continuous optimization. We will always adhere to it. Base on this, we’ve developed big outdoor scenarios using unmanned tractors in the airport. It will gradually extend to other important application scenarios such as wharfs. The goal of VisionNav Robotics is to become world leading company providing universal platform of precise driverless technology.”