Coming Soon! VISIONNAV ROBOTICS Will Show at Korea MAT 2021 with Latest Driverless Logistics Solution

 Coming Soon! VISIONNAV ROBOTICS Will Show at Korea MAT 2021 with Latest Driverless Logistics Solution

Right after Logis-Tech in Japan, VisionNav Robotics, a global industrial driverless vehicle supplier, is making another action to enter Korean market and will exhibit at Korea MAT2021, the largest logistics industry show in the country. This year's Korea MAT2021 will be held from May 25 to 28 at the Kintex Pavilion in South Korea. This time, VisionNav Robotics and its partners will present the world's first integrated solution of how driverless forklift trucks work with shared pallets. Such solution is to better match information flow and logistic flow to help enterprises quickly realize unmanned internal logistics.

 

▲ VisionNav at Koreamat 2021

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, industrial driverless vehicle has attracted much attention in the market. The deployment of industrial driverless vehicles to replace unnecessary manual operations has become an important measure for enterprises to cope with the new normal. According to Grand View Research, the global market of industrial unmanned vehicles will grow at an annual rate of 15.6% before 2025. VisionNav Robotics’ products are known for their flexibility, which can cope with the unmanned logistics needs in complex scenarios. To cater advanced manufacturing industry in South Korea, VisionNav Robotics has brought three disruptive products and solutions:

▼ Exhibition Preview 1: Vision Navigation Automated Guided Forklift

 

▲ Automated Guided Forklift

The vision navigation automated guided forklift developed by VisionNav Robotics integrates machine vision, environmental awareness, servo control, deep learning, 5G and other advanced technologies, which can realize autonomous path planning, obstacle bypass, system integration and automatic charging. It can go deep into the core logistic scene, and realize unmanned material handling, storage and retrieval in the warehouse. And its working efficiency is close to the manual peak efficiency so as to help enterprises realize the internal unmanned logistics. At present, VisionNav Robotics’ driverless industrial vehicle has obtained CE certificate, complying with EU Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC and the latest ISO 3691-4:2020.standards.

 ▼ Exhibition Preview 2: Unmanned Stacking Scheme

 

▲ Goods Stacking

Based on the visual identification technology and servo control technology, the unmanned stacking solution from VisionNav Robotics can meet the needs of pallet stacking and help to store cages by stacking. It is normally very difficult to identify different carrier and stack cages very precisely, in particularly stacking 5 levels or higher is very challenging for unmanned forklift. At present, the solution is mainly used in automobile manufacturing, food manufacturing and third-party logistics enterprises.

▼ Exhibition Preview 3: Shared Pallet

 

▲ Intelligent Shared Pallet

Thanks to the development of industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and RFID technology, the standardized shared pallet is introduced, they can easily achieve real-time tracking of goods information, improve cargo loading and unloading efficiency by about 50%, thus helping enterprises better manage goods and reduce operating costs. In addition, the pallet is made of 100% recyclable plastic and can be recycled. At present, shared pallets have been used in more than 13 countries and regions in the world.

“VisionNav Robotics’ highly flexible unmanned forklift solution is very popular in many companies because it can fit the customer's original business process without changing the site environment.” Vivian Han, Sales Director for South Korea, says companies will find it extremely difficult to hire qualified warehouse operators in the next few years. VisionNav Robotics already has plenty of experience in the field of "machines replace people". In China and East Asia, VisionNav Robotics has completed more than 50 large-scale projects.

VisonNav Robotics was established in 2016 by a team of PhDs from The Chinese University of Hong Kong and Tokyo University. We are committed to applying artificial intelligence, environmental perception, deep learning and servo control technologies into the industrial driverless field, providing high performance driverless industrial vehicles and unmanned logistics solutions for global users, helping companies realize "machines replace people" and improve logistics efficiency, storage capacity and digital management.

Exposition Information

Event: KOREAMAT2021

Address: kINTEX 1(Daehwa-dong Ilsan-seogu, Goyang-si, Gyeonggi-do, Seoul, South Korea)

Date: May 25th-28th, 2021

Booth No.: 2F301

Website: www.visionnav.com

YouTube channel: VNROBOT

Considering the impact of the epidemic, Koreamat has specially opened an online 1:1 business Matching platform. You can visit the following website to make an appointment with us:

https://www.koreamat.org/eng/visitor/meeting_request.asp

VisionNav Robotics, 한국 최대 물류전시회KOREAMAT서 무인 지게차 선보일 예정

 VisionNav Robotics, 한국 최대 물류전시회KOREAMAT서 무인 지게차 선보일 예정 

글로벌 무인 지게차 선두 기업 VisionNav는 일본Logis-Tech을 이어 한국 최대 물류전시회 KOREA MAT2021에 참석한다. KOREA MAT2021전시회는 오는 5월 25일부터 28일까지 한국 일산 킨텍스에서 주최된다. 이번 전시회에서Visionnav robotics는 무인 지게차와 파트너사의 스마트 팔레트를 함께 선보일 예정이다. 

 

（Koreamat 예고）

코로나19로 인해 무인 산업차량시장에 대한 시장관심이 폭증하고 있다. 많은 기업 들에서 점차 무인화 차량으로 단순 노동의 인력을 대체하고 있다. Grand View Research 조사에 따르면 2025년까지 매년 글로벌 무인 지게차 시장이 매년 15.6%의 속도로 성장하고 있다고 보고했다. Visionnav Robotics 제품은 여러가지 업종에 적용 가능하고 본 전시회에서는 한국의 선두적인 제조산업을 타겟으로 3가지 제품과 솔루션을 선보일 예정이다. 

전시 예정 1：비전을 이용한 무인 지게차

 

무인 지게차

Visionnav robotics는 비전을 이용한 무인 지게차로 환경감지, 서보 제어, 딥러닝 ,5G등 기술로 자체 경로 지정, 장애물 회피 ,자동충전 등 기능을 보유하고 있다.무인 반송 , 출 입고 등 작업 효율을 높이므로 기업내 내부 물류 무인화를 실현 가능하다. 제품 역시 유럽기계류 지침 2006/42/EC와 ISO ISO 3691-4: 2020최신 국제 무인 주행 공업차량 CE 기준을 만족한다.

전시예정2：무인 스택 솔루션 

 

무인 스택 솔루션

Visonnav Robotics 무인 스택 솔루션은 팔레트와 케이즈 등 여러 종류의 케리어 스택 수요를 만족 가능하다. 비전 기술과 서보 제어 기술을 기반으로 오차 없이 5단까지 스택 가능하다.  스택 솔루션은 주요하고 차량 제조업 ，식품 제조업과 물류 업계에 주요하게 쓰인다. 

전시 예정3：공유 팔레트

 

공유 팔레트

IIOT을 기반으로 RFID 기술로 개발된 공유 팔레트는 화물 실시간 추적 ,50%의 상하 차 효율 상승 등 고객을 위해 더 나은 화물 관리를 실현케 하고 원가절감을 돕는다. 본 팔레트는 100% 재활용 가능 한 플라스틱으로 이미 13개국가와 지역에서 사용 중에 있다.

“Visionnav robotics는고객의 기존 현장환경과 업무 프로세스를 변화하지 않고 무인 솔루션을 제공하여 고객에 환경을 받고 있다.” Visionnav Robotics 한국 영업 총괄이사 한예화는（Vivian Han）추후 창고 인원을 채용이 여러가지 복합적인 요소로 점차 어려워 질것이다. Visionnav Robotics는 기존의 업무프로세스를 교체하지 않는 선에서 무인 지게차로 인원을 대체하는 솔루션에 많은 경험치를 쌓았고 이미 중국과 동남아를 포함하여 50군데 이상의 대형 프로젝트 레퍼런스를 가지고 있다고 밝혔다.

VisionNav Robotics는 2016년 홍콩 중문 대학과 일본 동경 대학의 박사팀으로 설립된 인공 지능 （AI）, 환경인식, 딥 러닝, 서보 제어 등 기술을 보유하고 있는 무인 산업 차량 전문 회사다. 고객에게 무인화 솔루션을 제공하고 물류 효율성 , 저장 용량 및 디지털 관리까지 토탈 솔루션도 제공 가능하다. 

전시회 인포메이션

Event: KOREAMAT2021

Address: kINTEX 1(Daehwa-dong Ilsan-seogu, Goyang-si, Gyeonggi-do, Seoul, South Korea)

Date: May 25th-28th, 2021

Booth No.: 2F301

Website: www.visionnav.com

YouTube channel: VNROBOT

코로나 영향으로 KoreaMAT에서 특별이 온라인 1：1 Matching 플랫폼을 제공 합니다. 아래 사이트로 이동하시면 저희와 온라인 미팅 가능하십니다.

https://www.koreamat.org/eng/visitor/meeting_request.asp

VisionNav Robotics raises nearly $15 million in Series B2 funding led by IDG Capital, leading unmanned and flexibility transformation in logistics nodes

 

According to 36Kr's report, VisionNav Robotics, a global leader in driverless industrial vehicles, announces its completion of B2 round funding end of 2020. The funding is led by IDG Capital, Lenovo Capital, Eastern Bell Capital and Flyfot Ventures continue to follow the investment. This funding will be used for new technology and development of  driverless industrial vehicles, and large-scale promotion in automobile manufacturing, FMCG industry and petrochemical industry, as well as to expand overseas market and develop new customers. 

Statistics shows that domestic industrial vehicle sales in domestic market is about 810,000 units in 2020, of which driverless industrial vehicle sales is only 3,500units, accounting for less than 1%. The reason is that current driverless industrial vehicle products cannot meet the needs of customers' existing internal logistics modes, for example peak efficiency imcomparable with manual operation, high requirement of precision operation, and self-adaptable to a variety of complex scenarios. The industry believes that the key to change this situation is to improve the level of flexibility of driverless industrial vehicles and logistics solutions. Since the year of 2020, VisionNav Robotics has successively knocked down the most obvious barrier in core scenarios and released flexible solutions within logistics nodes, such as truck loading and unloading, multi-layer movable stillage cages stacking, high level material put-away and picking, etc., helping clients to achieve the flexible upgrade of driverless logistics, and successively implement the large-scale promotion in various industries. Over the past five years, VisionNav Robotics has served more than 100 clients, for more than 20 Fortune 500 companies, and is now the market leader.

In the past five years since its establishment, VisionNav Robotics has continued to increase its investment in research and development, improving the positioning, sensing and control ability of driverless industrial vehicles, and made a number of breakthroughs in the past two years. The peak efficiency of driverless operation is close to the human efficiency, which greatly shortens the gap between driverless industrial vehicles and manual operation; The millimeter-level high-precision positioning and control capability can accurately complete the forking, stacking, putting away and picking, and adjusting misplaced loads, improving task completion level of driverless industrial vehicles. Also, the driverless industrial vehicles are getting more adaptable to complex scenarios, and are capable of completing tasks more safely and efficiently in highly human-machine co-working field. VisionNav Robotics will continue to distribute the application of self-driving architecture in driverless industrial vehicles and realize productization to further meet the demand for flexible driverless logistics with "smarter" vehicles.

Xin Wang, partner of IDG Capital says: We are very optimistic about the long-term development of driverless forklifts, which will be used everywhere in warehousing logistics and factory workshops in the future. At the same time, AI empowers flexibility to its fork end operation, which is an integration of driverless technology and robotics technology in closed environment. With long-term accumulation and persistence in the field of machine vision, VisionNav team has formed its own core technology in controller and machine vision, which not only can provide more cost-effective products, but also significantly expand the application scope of products and serve clients of more industries.

Zhiqiang He, Senior Vice President of Lenovo Group and the President of Lenovo Capital says: data intelligence empowering all industries will be the biggest industrial opportunity in the future. VisionNav Robotics is using core technologies such as autonomous driving, machine vision and AI to significantly improve the efficiency of manufacturing and logistics industry, to quickly complete the landing of projects in many fields and to achieve technical breakthrough to solve inelastic demand, growing into an absolute leader in the industry. We will continue to support the future development of VisionNav Robotics with Lenovo Group’s industrial resources, build an intelligent ecosystem, and jointly promote the intelligent development of Chinese industry.

Guangxi Wang, vice president of Lenovo Group and partner of Lenovo Capital says: With the gradual clarification of business development and scene demands, the explosive period of driverless internal logistics upgrade will come rapidly. VisionNav Robotics has key advantage of  autonomous driving technology architecture with machine vision as the core, and has established a solid barrier in driverless logistics. Lenovo Capital has raised its two consecutive rounds on VisionNav Robotics believing it will soon join the star cast of autonomous and driverless industrial vehicles with its highly competitive product matrix and  commercialization system.

Tao Tang, partner of Eastern Bell Capital says: The world’s driverless logistics industry is currently growing rapidly, and the Chinese market is shifting from catching up to leading. During the epidemic, low-speed autonomous driving technology has played a key role in logistics and distribution and many other fields. with the attention from investors continually rising, low-speed autonomous driving is on the eve of outbreak. As one of the leading developers of low-speed autonomous driving framework in China, VisionNav Robotics has independently developed a number of high standard products and driverless logistics solutions based on its core technologies. By integrating superior resources to actively seize market and promoted the large-scale landing of autonomous driving technology around the world, VisionNav Robotics has showed its powerful strength. We expect that VisionNav Robotics to continue to play its advantages and create more value in flexible driverless logistics nodes.

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About VisionNav Robotics

Founded in 2016, VisionNav Robotics is engaged in the technology development and production of driverless industrial vehicles. Combining driverless industrial vehicles with computer vision, motion control, artificial intelligence, deep learning and other technologies, VisionNav Robotics has developed driverless logistics solutions that is both  flexible and efficient, and been promoting the  process of flexible driverless upgrading within logistics nodes globally.

Forklift AGV Cross-Floor Material Transportation Collaboratively, Helping Well-Known Food Processing Company to Achieve Smart Manufacturing

 

 

This customer is a well-known domestic food processing group with global sales network. It owns several production base in and outside the country, with more than 5,000 employees. The company is also the first food processing company to pass FDA national audit activities in China.

Raw material warehouse located on 3/F, the top floor, and the temperature is high due to its geographical location, which is not not suitable for any staff to stay for a long time. When the production workshop sends out material transportation tasks, it will take 20 minutes for the operator to arrive at the third floor and pick cargo after receiving tasks information.

 

What was worse, an outdated elevator is used for material transportation between floors, the space is very limited for one pallet, and if the pallet is not placed well, it is very difficult to pick out the cargo. Without efficient management to the elevator, conflicts are easily raised when there are storage and retrieve tasks between different floors, so that the material delivery is always not in time thus reduce production efficiency.

 

To improve production management, upgrades techniques for industry needs, the customer have decided to introduce unmanned facilities, that is VisionNav’s unmanned logistics solutions, to improve its product competitiveness.

 

 

 

Project Requirement

There are 3 floors in the building, 1F is loading area, 2F is workshop, 3F is raw material warehouse. Packaging material, which is empty bottles, needs to be transported with chuan-type pallets and tian-type pallets. Forklift AGV needs to transport raw material from 1F loading bay to 3F raw material warehouse for storage and retrieval. When there are material delivery requirements sending from 2F production line, forklift AGV will transport raw material from 3F warehouse to 2F production area. There are 5 production lines in 2F.

 

Solution / Product
01. Mini Reach Truck AGV

 

02.Bright-Eye Environmental Monitoring System

By seamless integrating with customer site WMS system and VisionNav WCS system, data flow can be interacted quick and accurately. The systems involved in the products include: Bright-Eye Environmental Monitoring System, WCS system, elevator docking system, handheld terminal system, etc. to realize comprehensive control of the human, cargo, vehicle and equipments.

 

 

Solution Overview:

Following Existing Operation Processes

（1）Raw Material Storage-in: from 1F loading bay to 3F warehouse

• After raw material is unloadedand labelled at the loading bay, WMS system will issue commands anddispatch transportation tasks for 2 elevators based on actual productionsituation: use two elevators to transport raw material from 1F to 3Fwarehouse during idle time, in case production is busy then distribute oneelevator for material transportation between 2F production and 3Fwarehouse.
• When cargo from 1Fenter the elevator, the forklift AGV on 3F will automatically goes infront of the elevator and wait. If the system did not send out anyretrieve instructions, then 2 forklift AGV will execute storage-in taskscollaboratively.

 

Project Highlight

✓In the past, when cargo is placed into the elevator by manual forklifts, the placement is always not appropriate, making it very difficult to pick cargo out of the elevator. Now when using forklift AGV, by using multiple sensor in front of the forklift and at fork arm ends, the pallet position can be detected automatically without forklift AGV entering the elevator.

 

✓ Forklift AGV can self-adjusts its own posture to pick the cargo, so that pallet will not be placed inappropriately, not hitting the elevator leading cargo collapse.

 

✓ Forklift AGV is equipped with RFID scanner, after scanning the cargo information, it will automatically transport the pallet to designated storage location.

 

（2）Material Delivery For Production Area: from 3F Warehouse to 2F Production

• When there is inneed of material, system will send material retrieval tasks to forkliftAGV on 3F, to co-work with forklift AGV on 2F, to transport raw materialto the corresponding buffer area for production line. The time spent forthe entire process will reduce from 20min to 10 min, dramatically reducetime and improve production efficiency.
•  

 

Project Highlight
✓ For the production lines on 2F, VisionNav set up 5 buffer areas, there are 10 locations in each area. With VisionNav’s Bright-Eye location monitoring system, the utilization of the location can be smarter, more visualized and more effective.
✓ Under the monitoring of Bright-Eye system, the storage location situation of the buffer area can be monitored and uploaded in real time to WMS system. If any pallet in the locations is taken away, central control system will schedule the forklift AGV on 3F to execute retrieve tasks, making sure that enough material will be stored in the buffer area to flexibly adapt to consumption rate of different production line, and help to smooth the production.

 

 

（3）Warehouse Management: 3F Raw Material Warehouse

• During productionidle time, WMS system will issue commands to schedule forklift AGV on 3Fraw material warehouse to reallocate the pallet locations.

 

Project Highlight

✓ With VisionNav deep learning visual perception technology, forklift AGV can identify pallets with different loads and send to designated areas. Remaining storage capacity can also be calculated to make space for other pallets , releasing storage capacity pressure, increasing storage capacity and facilitating better storage management.

from https://www.visionnav.com/articledetail/87.html

The application of unmanned forklifts in home appliance manufacturers has helped the group's "smart factory" advance layout

 Flexible unmanned logistics solution can play an important role in home appliance manufacturing enterprises. In this article, we take the example of a world-known home appliance group company, and fully introduce the unmanned application in their intra-logistics, from project requirement, proposal development, to project introduction and others. The project has realized automatic and unmanned management from the production line to finished goods outbound.

 

 

In the past 40 years, China's home appliance industry has undergone the evolution from large-scale production, to mechanized production and to automated production. With the diversified consumer needs and the promotion of "new retail" model, traditional home appliance manufacturing model is quite difficult to meet market expectations. Thus many forward-looking companies have begun to seek a breakthrough for their development, using new technology to complete industry upgrades has become an industry consensus.

 

Project Requirement

The group company is the leading manufacturer of home appliances. Ranking world's top 500, it has a pivotal position in the home appliances industry. The group company owns 15 production base in and outside China. With the goal of “Smart Factory”, the entire group is working on intelligent upgrading in depth. The first batch of the projects are implemented in Zhuhai Guangdong, Meishan Sichuan, Ma Anshan Anhui and Nanjing Jiangsu, which are their main production bases, to enable unmanned intra-logistics during the enamelled wire production processes.

 

Enamelled wire is an indispensable material to many home appliances core components。 It’s heavyweight and special carrier shall be used for load and unload. Therefore, the operational requirement for internal transportation is relatively high. The process for this project includes: transporting material from high speed machine to temporary warehouse beside production line, from packing area to finished goods warehouse, and transportation of finished goods and semi-finished goods between different workshops. The bare wires will be transported by cylindrical baskets, pallets or roller cages, total self-weight is 1t to 1.5t. The goal is to achieve fully unmanned transportation and automatic management in above mentioned processes so as to increase operation efficiency and reduce labor cost.

 

Processes and Material Information

 

Material Name	Carrier	Weight (with carrier)	Carrier Size	Process	Transportation  Type
Bare wire circle	Wire basket	≤2000kg	Φ1100*H1720mm opening spacing616mm, opening width245mm, opening height100mm	Bare wire staging area ⇔ High speed machine	Fast-speed material transportation
Semi-finished goods	Chuan Pallet	≤1200kg	L1200mm*W1200mm*160mm	Drawbench– Buffer Storage -- Machine	Docking with conveyor, storage in 3 stacks
Finished goods	Chuan Pallet	≤1500kg	L1200mm*W1200mm*160mm	Packing -- Warehouse	Storage-in
Finished goods	Roller Cage	2-3 Storage cage≤6T	1.0m*1.0m*1.05m 1.0m*1.0m*0.72m 1.0m*1.0m*0.78m	Workshop – Workshop	Outdoor traction

 

Solution and Project Deployment

After site investigation, VisionNav proposed a smart and reproducible unmanned logistics solution based on automated guided vehicles and intelligent scheduling system. We use different automated guided forklifts for different processes: pallet mover AGV (VNT20), Slim pallet stacker AGV (SLIML14), reach truck AGV (VNR16) and unmanned tractor (VNQ60). VisionNav also provide our own central control system for the entire project. There is no reflectors or magnetic tapes installed, no need to modify the sites, giving more flexibility and scalability.

 

Software	Central Control System		Support to schedule over 100 vehicles, and dock with over 5000 automatic devices
Network	5G or Wifi
Hardware	VisionNav Automated Guided Forklifts
	Bare wire area – High-speed machine	Drawbench– Buffer Storage –Woven Machine	Packing – FG Warehouse	Workshop -- Workshop
Facility	High-speed machine: 20	Drawbench, Woven Machine, Racking level: 3	Racking height: 7m Racking level:3	3 workshop
Material	Carrier: wire basket + wire circle Weight: ≤2000kg	Weight: ≤1200kg	Weight: ≤1500kg	Roller cage: 2-3 Total weight ≤ 6 tons
Difficulties	Customized racking with multiple specification, need to pick accurately	Operation collaboration of multiple devices and workshops	Pick cargo at 7m height, fork tilt angel adjustment, beam detection, location detection, arrival detection and other safety detection	Long distance traction outdoor, unmanned driving under changeable environment (light, rain and snow, etc.)
AGV Type	Pallet mover AGV  (VNT20) 3 units	Slim pallet stacker AGV  (SLIML14) 7 units	Reach truck AGV  (VNR16) 2 units	Unmanned tractor  (VNW60) 1unit

 

01.  System Deployment

Customer already has its own MES system, VisionNav central dispatch system can seamless integrate with existing system to realize data accuracy. Information control mode: Party A scans label by a handheld terminal (hereinafter referred to as "PDA"), the MES system sends transportation command information.

 

02.  Bare wire area – High-speed machine

• High-speed machine: 20
• Carrier: wire basket+ wire circle
• Weight:≤2000kg
• AGV Type: Palletmover AGV (VNT20) 3 units

 

 

Highlight: the baskets are customized carriers, there are fixed picking place for VisionNav’s AGV to detect the picking point and pick the basket with self-adaptive perception, to increase operational efficiency.

 

03.  Drawbench– Buffer Storage –Woven Machine

• Drawbench: 20
• Woven Machine: 8
• Racking level: 3
• AGV type: Slim pallet stackerAGV (SLIML14) 7 units

 

Highlight: the use of slim design forklift AGV can reduce aisle width between racks from 3.2m to 2m, increasing storage capacity. In the meanwhile, forklift AGV will need to dock with auto roller doors automatically due to cross-workshop transportation. Safety scanner is installed in front of the forklifts, door status can be detected when AGV is passing through the doors and roller door lift up and down can be controlled as well.

 

Project Result

Solutions have been successfully applied in customer’s production base in Zhuhai, Meishan, Ma Anshan and Nanjing, to realize unmanned transportation from raw material to production line, from buffer storage to FG warehouse, replacing labor effectively and increase operation accuracy.

 

    §  Reduce labor: after havingunmanned forklifts, customer can achieve 24/7 operation, replacing previous2 shifts operation, reducing at least 12 operators;

§  Smart management: scheduling system can interact information flow and material flow to realize digitalization, automation and smart management.

§  Increase accuracy: Auto replenishment, material transit and storage can be achieved in the production, achieving “in-time” logistics and adaptive to production frequency quickly and reduce human error.

 

   

 

 

Customer also comment that “VisionNav Robotics has a profound research and development foundation in automated guided forklifts, with advanced vision technology and stable products, I’m surely they can provide good service and help us to build ‘Smart factory’ in the future.”

from https://www.visionnav.com/articledetail/86.html