Case Study: Exploration of Intra-logistics Automation in Caterpillar Track Industry

 

Abundant workforce was once one of the most important factors in the boom of manufacturing industry. However, with the decrease of fertility rate, such driving force is seemingly fading out and put a threat on manufacturing industry. Many companies tried to offer high salaries and bonuses to attract more talents, or move their sites to Southeast Asia countries where workforce seems more ample. However, it cannot fundamentally solve labor shortage problem. How to break through such dilemma has long been problems for many Chinese companies in traditional manufacturing industry.

In order to cope with this problem, one of our customers (hereinafter referred to as "customer"), in traditional crawler manufacturing, chose to speed up their process of unmanned production and start the exploration for intra-logistics automation.

【Project Overview】

Established in the early 1990s, customer have been pursuing excellent manufacturing and R&D innovation, constantly introducing new products and providing services to a broader market. The cooperation with VisionNav Robotics also complies with their concept of continuous innovation to conform to social development.

Customer mainly produces and sells undercarriage components for hydraulic excavators and track-type tractors, including link assemblies, track groups and master links with high-quality and low-cost. Its plant covers area of approximately 3,400 square meters with more than 300 employees. Company planned to automatically transfer raw materials stored in the warehouse to the production lines by unmanned forklift AGF, docking with chassis production. Considering situation that personnel in the workshop shall walk around, it is required that AGF shall operate will in human-robot co-work environment, achieving the purpose of human-robot collaboration and logistics automation.

 

【Project Difficulties】

1. Feed material to production line in time. In order to supply raw material timely, it is necessary to accurately obtain the raw material needs of production lines, as well as the location of storage and status information, so that the unmanned forklift can transport and replenish raw materials for production in soonest time.

2. Consider safety and efficiency in human-robot co-work environment. Production workshops and the raw material storage area are in the same space. In addition, there are workshop personnel to move frequently, making operating environment complicated.

 

【Solution】

After comprehensive evaluation of the customer's production process, workshop layout, material specifications, and transportation requirement, VisionNav Robotics provided an unmanned production line logistics solution using pallet stacker type AGF and robot control system. By using vision navigation AGF, there is no need to modify the site, ensuring flexibility and scalability, proofing it a perfect solution for workshops where human-robot co-work and narrow-lane raw material transportation are required; and central control system can also fully integrate with customer production line requirements and warehouse information, ensuring the synchronization of information flow and material flow.

1. AGF Operation Process

1)       Operator manually issues transportation request through call device, robot control system then dispatches AGF to designated location to pick material, and transport to the production line corresponding base location, and put down at the designated location;

2)       When there is an empty pallet at base location, operator shall manually issue transportation request through call device, and robot control system dispatches AGF to the designated location and take the empty pallet and transport it to the empty pallet storage area.

 

2. AGF Function Design

VisionNav Robotics vision navigation AGF adopts self-developed visual positioning, perception and control technology to realize accurate, efficient and flexible handling of materials. AGF and the supporting control system are equipped with functions below:

1)      Positioning and perception. Camera installed on top of AGF captures the image of the site environment, system extract and analyze information from these images to establish map with features of customer’s site. System then can also obtain accurate AGF location and pose information to realize self-localization, motion control and navigation functions with high efficiency, high accuracy and high stability.

2)      Route planning. Based on perception and positioning, combined with actual environment of customer site, AGF can quickly calculate the best path for the operation. Within a certain deviation range, the predetermined route can be automatically retrieved with the help of visual-SLAM system, and automatically self-correct.

3)       Control and communication. Robot central control system can realize remote monitoring of AGF. By using cloud technology to storage big data, AGF can feedback its own state data to robot control system, and realize the information interaction between robot control system and AGF. The interface of robot control system is sleek and simply, operators can quickly master the operation after quick and simple training.

4)       Safety Protection. AGF is equipped with 360° safety protection measures to maintain distance between obstacle and other forklift trucks, ensuring the safety of people, vehicles and goods. Emergency buttons are installed at one side of the AGF to further ensure the safe operation of the vehicle.

 

 

【Added Value】

This project is the first step for the customer to automate its internal factory logistics. By realizing auto transportation of raw materials, seamlessly docking with production line, and timely responding to transportation demand, customer can save labor costs and thus reduce total production cost. AGF operating 7*24 hours can meet day-and-night-shift production needs, making uninterrupted and effective operation of internal logistics possible.

 

【Conclusion】

Since the industrial revolution, the development of industry is the history of development using tools to liberate manpower. The development of automation tools has become more refined. VisionNav Robotics is dedicated to the study and development of driverless industrial vehicles. By providing customers with valuable industrial logistics automation solutions, we can help more and more companies to achieve factory and logistics automation, making contribution to China’s manufacturing for staying vigorous!

 

About VisionNav Robotics         

As a global leader in industrial unmanned vehicles, Visionnav (www.visionnav.cn) has focused on the research and development of unmanned industrial vehicles and unmanned logistics solutions since its establishment in 2016, and insisted on empowering industry with vehicle-level unmanned driving technology. Vehicles promote the flexible unmanned transformation of enterprise internal logistics. At present, the VisionNav Robotics has developed 8 series of unmanned forklift products, and completed the breakthrough in the whole process of just-needed scenes, including 9.4m high access, 2.0m narrow channel access, unmanned loading and unloading trucks, and 6-layer or more mobile rack stacking Waiting for the scene. With unique technical routes and excellent unmanned logistics solutions, robots will achieve rapid growth in the future, with more than 150 landing projects in many fields such as automobile manufacturing, tires, food, petrochemicals, e-commerce logistics, third-party logistics, and pharmaceuticals. Among them, there are many benchmark cases of Fortune 500 companies.

Tire Industry Application: VisionNav Works with World-Known Tire Company for Warehouse Automation Upgrade

Statistics from China Association of Automobile Manufacturers shows that 5.23 million commercial vehicles were produced in China in 2020, with an 20% increase. And the sales volume also increase by 18% to 5.1 million units. As car industry performs better than expected, tire manufacturing, the upstream industry is also on the rise.

 

According to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics, China's cumulative output of rubber tires reaches 81.47 million units last year with an increase of 1.7%. From August to December, monthly output increased by over 10%. The tire industry is growing rapidly in post-epidemic era.

 

Recently, VisonNav Robotics has worked with the world’s top10 tire manufacturing company, to provide solution for their warehouse transformation and automation upgrades.

 

 

【Project Overview】

There are two warehouses of 40,000m² in customer factory. Both warehouses are built with multiple floors. The idea is to use driverless forklift AGVs to transport tires with racks to the warehouse and store by stacking up to 6 layers. Each rack only stores tire of same batch and same SKU. The total 1600 SKUs will be transported to outbound staging area when there are ship out requests. Forklift AGVs also transport empty racks for recycling in the warehouse.

 

 

【Project Difficulties】

1. Cross-floor material handling. Storage area on each floor is 438*95m. Such large space takes a lot of time and efforts to rearrange storage locations in the early stage. And it’s more challenging to meet customer’s expectation regarding multi-floor interconnection and forklift agv auto docking with elevator.

2. System integration with high flexibility. To better dock with customer's existing WMS system, VisionNav's software system shall schedule forklift AGVs to execute inbound and outbound tasks for a large number of SKUs. It's even more challenging to dock with mechanical arms in production line and the operators/terminals in loading dock area.

3. High precision. The total weight of one rack is around 856kg with limited space for fork entry. The spread distance between fork entry holes is also different from rack to rack. What's more, the opening size of the four feet is small. Therefore, the accuracy of the operation is extremely high when need to self-adaptively fork the rack and stack to 6 layers.

4. High efficiency. There are more than 110,000 tires being stored in and 120,000 to 200,000 tires shipped out in daily basis. Therefore, transportation frequency is high and also high efficiency is required.

 

 

【Solution】

Considering the project scale, efficiency and customer expectations, VisioNnav plan to offers 69 driverless forklifts of various types, as well as softwares including Warehouse Management System and Robot Control System and other backup systems, to help upgrade the warehouse both in material handling and data record.

 

In order to improve the operation efficiency, VisionNav forklift AGVs are programmed to execute these below processes: warehouse (transport racks to inbound area) → transfer to buffer area (unload the racks to be stored, and transport racks to outbound area) → outbound area (unload the racks to outbound, transport back the empty racks) → transfer to buffer area / inbound area (unload the empty racks).

 

 

 

VisionNav Robotics Warehouse Management System

Storage location management function: Record the real-time status of the storage position and number the goods of the current storage location.

Storage location sorting function: Tallying goods in spare time according to pre-set.

Report function: Generate reports about inbound, outbound and real-time inventory.

Cargo information management function: Manage cargo information.

Location allocation function: Support customized the storage location allocation strategy when inbound.

Material picking function: Automatically select the outbound cargo based on the recorded goods information.   

 

VisionNav Robot Control System

VisionNav Robot Control System is developed for the scenarios of discrete tasks, indefinite intervals, and long-term delivery in material handling. It can realize multi-vehicle task scheduling and path planning to improves overall logistics efficiency without sacrificing vehicles’ running speed while no collision and congestion.

 

 

【Function Description】

Automatic inbound: VisionNav Robotics Warehouse Control System can dock with MES system (robotic arms put tires into the rack, upon completion it will send signal to VisionNav Robotics Warehouse Control System with tire material information) -- After receiving task requests, it will automatically query the allocated location and generate the inbound task. Robot Control System dispatches forklift AGVs to transport the racks filled with tires to the warehouse for storage. When task completed, information will feedback to Warehouse Control System, and will be updated with location information. At the same time, data is synchronized to customer WMS system.

 

Automatic outbound: Operators send order-ship-out requests through ERP system. After receiving the requests, VisionNav Warehouse Control System will query the location information of the material and generate warehouse delivery tasks, then docked with Robot Control System to schedule forklift AGVs to transport the target rack to the outbound area. After completing the task, it would feedback the information to Warehouse Control System. After the location information is updated, the data is synchronized to the customer’s WMS system through the interface. WMS system will display the rack and the order information on Kanban screen in the warehouse area, so as to remind the workers to take away and load the truck in time.

 

 

 

【Added Values】

It innovates the entire supply chain management process and reduced the intensity of manual work. After the warehouse upgrades, both warehouse areas can increase storage capacity up to 2 million tires, which is 1.5 times larger than before. It can work 24/7, but in such nonstop working processes workers being replaced by robots, reducing production costs and improve working efficiency, perfectly realizing fully automatic and scientific management of warehousing.

 

About VisionNav Robotics

VisionNav Robotics, a global leader in industrial driverless vehicles, is committed to enabling vehicles with driverless technology and promoting flexible unmanned application in logistics. VisionNav Robotics provides industrial driverless vehicle products and flexible unmanned logistics solutions for manufacturing logistics and warehousing logistics. At present, various types of autonomous forklift and tractor products have been developed and produced, realizing applications such as up to 9.4m high level storage and retrieval, up to 2.0m narrow passage storage and retrieval, truck loading and unloading, and multi-layer stacking, which are widely used in automobile manufacturing, tire manufacturing, food, petrochemical, e-commerce logistics, third party logistics, pharmaceutical and many other industries.

 

Automation Spotlight: VisionNav Robotics Introduces Heavy-load Forklift AGV

 

As a global leader in industrial driverless vehicles, VisionNav Robotics release heavy-load driverless forklift VNL45 to enable internal logistics with heavier payload and higher flexibility. VisionNav’s new product VNL45 is the masterpiece in their pallet stacker type forklift AGV series. With payload of 0-4.5t and lifting height of 0-4m, it can be widely used for bulky and heavy material transportation and storage. 

Heavy-Load · High Flexibility * Pallet Stacker AGV

VisionNav VNL45

Load Capacity New Record for Logistics Automation

Compared to conventional forklift AGV, VisionNav Robotics VNL45 series is equipped with stronger capacity to transport large size and heavy materials. Its load capacity increases to 4.5T, breaking the limit of conventional pallet stacker AGV’s 3T load capacity and bringing new possibilities for heavy-load logistics automation.

Extraordinary Lifting Capacity for Logistic Demands

VisionNav’s VNL45 forklift AGV also optimizes lifting capacity when increasing it load capacity. Compared to conventional pallet stacker type forklift, its lifting capacity increases from 3m to 4m, which can meet more than 75% internal logistic including material transportation in production lines, and transportation from production to warehouse.

Flexible, Stable and Safe

Apart from using vision as core technology, VNL45 is equipped with additional intelligent perception modules for carrier detection, shelf detection, arrival detection, space detection, etc. It also has 360° anti-collision safety avoidance devices to ensure operation stability and safety. Meanwhile, VNL45 has overload protection to handle 4.5t load at 6m lifting height, which can adapt to various demands in different scenarios.

 

Strong Capacity for More Applications

 

The release of VNL45 takes VisionNav Robotics to the forefront of the heavy-load forklift AGV field. VNL45 is very suitable to transport big size and heavy material, applicable to industries such as ceramic , furniture , machinery processing, etc.

"It is very obvious that VNL45 has better ability, but the main difficulty is not about building the truck body..." Yang Jianhui, Director of VisionNav Robotics, said that application scalability however is the key. Especially under complex working conditions, VNL45 not only needs to deal with onsite interference such as dust, light and uneven ground, but also needs to complete various tasks perfectly, accurately and efficiently, for example, material pick-up and drop-off, horizontal transportation, rack shelf put-away and storage, … and cargo stacking, which is widely considered as the most difficult operation in ceramic industry.  “VNL45 is equipped with the latest visual sensors and algorithm, which can greatly improve environment perception, operation accuracy and efficiency”

VNL45 is the first heavy-duty driverless forklift product launched by VisionNav Robotics. New products for the same series will be introduced later by the team, including heavy-load pallet mover AGV, heavy-load counterbalanced stacker AGV ,etc. Let's look forward to it together!

Pallet Stacking Application: VisionNav Robotics AGV Contributes to Improve Flexibility in Food-processing Company

 

One of the customers that VisionNav served is a well-known food processing company in China, who has international management system, global quality supervision system and strong R&D team and sells products to USA，Canada, Japan, the Middle East and other countries and areas. However, due to the labor shortage in operations, inefficiency of finished good packing and warehousing has always been a long-term headache for the company. To solve the problem and further reduce costs, VisionNav Robotics introduced VNP15 series, counterbalanced stacker type forklift AGVs, as well as the digitalized management system, in order to replace traditional manual operation and realize full automation in logistics processes.

Project Overview

The project includes 2 processes:

1) Finished Goods Packaging: Forklift AGVs pick material from automatic stacker – send packing material to production line – (packing operator) - recycle empty pallets - replenishing empty pallets - transport finished goods to transit area;

2) Storage: Forklift AGV pick finished goods from transfer area and send to FG warehouse – storage by 2 stacks;

Solutions / Products

Part 1: VisionNav Robotics VNP15 Series Counterbalanced AGV

Counterbalanced Stacker Forklift AGV
Model No.	VNP10	VNP15
Lifting Height	0-4000mm	0-4500mm
MAX Loading Capacity	1000KG	1500KG
MINI Stacking Aisle Width	2750mm	3000mm
Weight (with battery)	2200KG	2400KG
Carrier / Goods Type	Nine Block Pallet Four-way Entry Open/Close-boarded Pallet Stillage Cage Roller Cage
Applicable Scenario	Indoor Horizontal Transportation Indoor Production Material Transfer Indoor Put-Away and Picking
Image

 

Part 2: VisionNav Robotics Central Control System

Information such as site forklift AGVs, pallets, goods, equipment will be controlled by central control system. The system issues tasks commands to forklift AGVs to schedule forklift AGVs to execute tasks.

Project Results

By using forklift AGV (multi-series) system, packing material (carton boxes, wrapping films) and finished goods will be unmanned transported among production line, transit area and FG warehouse. The workflows include sending packing material, replenish empty pallets, send finished goods to transit area and send finished goods from transit area to FG warehouse.

 

Project Highlights

1) High Flexibility: not changing original operation processes, site environment and equipment, adaptive to man-machine mixed operations;

2) High Efficiency: system automatically integrates without any manual intervention, forklift AGVs operate with high efficiency which is close to manual operation in peak;

3) High Stability: stack by two layers with high operation stability;

4) Safety: 360° anti-collision avoidance function with 5 level safety protection to ensure the safety of human, vehicles and goods.

 

Project Value

1) Reduce operating costs by replacing 10 operators’ vacancies. The company worked in 2 shifts per day, 5 operators per shift before, now it is unmanned operation all day;

2) Realize digital management by matching the information flow and logistics flow, to help upgrade intelligent manufacturing;

3) Achieve high efficiency with 24/7 unmanned operation, meeting the needs of material supplement, material replenishment and finished goods storage.

 

About VisionNav Robotics

VisionNav Robotics, a global leader in industrial driverless vehicles, is committed to enabling vehicles with driverless technology and promoting flexible unmanned application in logistics. VisionNav Robotics provides industrial driverless vehicle products and flexible unmanned logistics solutions for manufacturing logistics and warehousing logistics. At present, various types of autonomous forklift and tractor products have been developed and produced, realizing applications such as 9.4m high level storage and retrieval, 2.0m narrow passage storage and retrieval, truck loading and unloading, and multi-layer stacking, which are widely used in automobile manufacturing, tire manufacturing, food, petrochemical, e-commerce logistics, third party logistics, pharmaceutical and many other industries.

 

 

Heavy-load AGV: VisionNav Robotics Application in Ceramic Industry

Abstract: Unmanned logistics has been main focus of ceramic industry. This article takes an example of an internationally renowned ceramic company, fully introduces how to introduce heavy-loaded forklift AGV in business processes in terms of project requirements, proposal development and project implementation, and finally realize unmanned logistics and automation in tile production. 

In June 2021, unmanned logistics project jointly created by an internationally renowned ceramic company and VisionNav Robotics has been successfully launched, becoming an excellent example of intelligent logistics upgrading in ceramic industry.

Project Requirements

The company mainly produces ceramic tiles and plates, rock plate and other ceramic products, especially their ceramic plates, which enjoys a high reputation in both domestic and overseas markets. The company owns 3 large production bases, 21 ceramic tile production lines and 4 ceramic plate production lines in China and foreign countries. In recent years, with increasing demand of customization, company is actively looking for opportunities for intelligent upgrad. After several investigations in supplier’s strength, research and development capabilities, product performance and service capabilities, the company choose VisionNav to cooperate in their first unmanned logistics project in ceramic tile production.

In ceramic production, especially for customized tile plates, material is very heavy and fragile, raising high requirements in intra-transportation. Several business processes are involved in this project including material transportation from kiln to semi-finished stereoscopic warehouse, from warehouse to polishing line, which all need to realize unmanned logistics and automation management.

Unmanned Processes

Project Difficulties:

1) Complicated working conditions: working conditions in ceramic tile production area are normally very complicated, mainly are with high concentrations of dust and bad ground flatness. When unmanned facilities are introduced to the scene , man-machine mixing situation also needs to be considered. Therefore, higher requirements for safety and system scheduling ability of driverless vehicles are put forward.

2) Particularity of material: ceramic tiles, especially tile plates, are heavy in weight, large in size and fragile, which is a extremely test in carrying capacity and stability of driverless vehicles;

3) Process requirements: due to the requirement of precise stacking in stereoscopic warehouse, the perception and adaptive control ability of driverless vehicles are highly required. 

Solution and project deployment

After preliminary investigation and site visit, VisionNav Robotics developed an intelligent and replicated solution for internal unmanned logistics based on customer's needs and existing processes. Considering heavy weight of the material, the use of heavy-load driverless forklift VNL45 is proposed, with system integration between VisionNav central control system and customer’s existing business process management system. There is no need to install reflectors or magnetic strips on site, which enhance flexibility and scalability in the project.

 Heavy-Load Pallet Stacker Type Forklift AGF

 

1) System deployment

Customer has already deployed its own WMS system. VisionNav’s central control system (RCS) manage seamless system integration with the existing system to have accurate data.

2) Terminal deployment: Kiln → Semi-Finished Stereoscopic Warehouse → Polishing Line

Material: semi-finished ceramic tiles, 1000~3000Kg

Equipment: heavy load pallet stacker forklift AGV VNL45

Operational Process: Customer system calls forklift AGV via RCS to transport semi-finished products from kiln to stereoscopic warehouse. After 1 day for cooling, AGV will again transport products to polishing line, and return with empty rack.

Highlights: The material rack at customer site is with four-legs bearing type, which needs to be accurately stacked to a fixed position (4 fixed piles) on 1^st level of the rack in the warehouse. VisionNav Robotics’ forklift AGV automatically stacks material rack accurately. With the help of space perception, AGV can improve the accuracy of its operation.

1^st Level of the Rack in the Warehouse

 

Project Outcome

This project achieves unmanned material transportation between production line and semi-finished goods warehouse, effectively replacing manual work and improving operation accuracy, helping peer companies to achieve:

1)     Precise operation: forklift AGVs can work 24/7 to automatically unload, transported and store material, achieving in-time intra-logistics and reducing human operational errors.

2)     Intelligent management: scheduling system can do real-time matching of information flow and logistics flow, achieving the goal of digitalization, automation and intelligent management.

About VisionNav Robotics

VisionNav Robotics（www.visionnav.cn), a global leader in industrial driverless vehicles, is committed to enabling vehicles with technology, promoting flexible unmanned application in logistics. VisionNav Robotics provides industrial driverless vehicle products and flexible unmanned logistics solutions for manufacturing and warehousing logistics. At present, a number of driverless forklift and tractor products have been developed and produced, breaking through rigid demand scenarios such as 9.4m high access, 2.0m narrow channel access, driverless loading and unloading vehicles and multi-layer mobile frame stacking, which are widely used in automobile manufacturing, tire manufacturing, transportation, food, petrochemical, e-commerce logistics, third party logistics, pharmaceutical and other fields.

Major Product Launch! VisionNav Premieres First Counterbalanced Truck Series for Truck Loading and Unloading, Leading Large Scale Application in All Scenarios

 

VisionNav Robotics launched one of their most revolutionary products, VNP20 series automated guided counterbalanced truck. The new product can work indoor and outdoor, and do the truck loading and unloading in loading bay. It can also be used in in all different applications and scenarios.

R&D Background

In the past five years, with experiences from 100 projects and over 500 proposed solutions, VisionNav team realized that industrial driverless vehicle will not have large-scale application unless we can find solutions to solve the most complicated problems such as truck loading and unloading, put away and retrieval from high level racks, pallet stacking, stillage cage staking, etc. The difficulties always come from the complicated and volatile surrounding environment (man-human share paths, disordered placement, non-standard products, variety types of trucks, etc.)

For customers, the only way to know whether industrial driverless vehicles are workable (completely replacing manual trucks) is its peak working efficiency compared to manual trucks in c complicated and volatile surrounding environments. That is, without sacrificing safety and stability, “automated” perception (information acquisition) and motion control (action execution) capabilities shall be infinitely close to "manual".

Technology Implementation

At the end of 2018, VisionNav Robotics kicked off the research and development of VNP20 series. It took 10 doctors nearly three years to develop VNP20 product with strong sense and motion control ability by mixing self-developed 3D laser + visual perception technology, multi-axis real-time motion planning technology and high-precision visual servo control technology. With maximum running speed of 3.0m/s, multi-axis motion, accurate and continuous fork movement, the peak working efficiency of VNP20 can compare to manual truck in complex and changeable environment.

3D Laser + Visual Perception, Visual Servo Control for Better Safety and Efficiency

In forward direction, we use 3D laser + visual perception to greatly increase the perception distance and field of view. The maximum running speed of VNP20 can achive 3.0m/s while the operation is 100% safe. In the meanwhile, with in-depth learning and classification of obstacle targets, it can realize real-time judgment and auto detouring.

In the fork direction, we use 3D laser + vision to generate observations of the target objects and available space for pick and place, which can optimize real-time 6-DOF motion of the forklift AGV, as well as feedback results to visual server controller. These are to realize smooth movement of multi-axis combinations, making sure the accurate and efficient execution of the fork moving during loading and unloading, picking and placing, stacking and destacking, etc.

Equipped with Various Attachments to Standard Truck to Solve Non-Standard Issues

There are various attachments for VNP20 series standard products, such as side shifter, adjustable fork, multi-pallet handler, rotator, paper roll clamp, pipe winder, etc. We have standard control module configured for each type of attachments to meet different requirements for materials handling and transportation in different industries, such as pallets, cages, soft bags, paper rolls, and turnover boxes.

Stronger ground adaptability to cope with loading bay and outdoor working conditions

VNP20 is equipped with 450mm hard-wearing solid rubber wheels to have better obstacle surmounting ability, climbing maximum 13% degree slope, passing over maximum 50mm width grooves and running up maximum 30mm height steps. Now it can easily work in loading bay and outdoor for high-speed, heavy-loaded working conditions.

Starting with Truck loading and Unloading in Loading Bay to Cover All Scenarios

What are the key design of VNP20 series product launched by VisionNav Robotics?

Yang Jianhui, Product Director of VisionNav Robotics, said that during the R&D process, the main focus is on the AGV working ability in complex and changeable surrounding environment, including indoor positioning ability under changing lighting, 3D environment perception ability, accurate and efficient visual servo control ability, and water/dust-proof ability. “Truck loading and unloading operation accounts for more than 50% of the manual truck operations in warehousing logistics, which is the main target application place for VNP20. However, the working condition is highly complicated, not only because the variety of the truck types, parked vehicles everywhere, but also the diverse shapes of the material for loading and unloading, which requires our products to have very strong perception ability. In the meanwhile, truck loading and unloading requires highest peak efficiency in all scenarios, therefore it is also very important to achieve efficient motion by motion optimization and visual servo control.

VNP20 series products also use high-performance hardware, software and configuration from driverless cars to solve technical problems for complex scenarios such as truck loading and unloading, helping to build a solid foundation to realize large-scale application of industrial driverless vehicles in whole scenarios.

About VisionNav Robotics

VisionNav Robotics（www.visionnav.com), a global leader in industrial driverless vehicles, is committed to empower vehicles with technology and promote flexible unmanned application in logistics. VisionNav Robotics provides industrial driverless vehicle products and flexible unmanned logistics solutions for manufacturing and warehousing logistics. At present, it has developed and produced a variety of unmanned forklifts and tractors, breaking through rigid demand scenarios such as 9.4m high access, 2.0m narrow channel access, driverless loading and unloading vehicles and multi-layer mobile frame stacking, which are widely used in automobile manufacturing, tire manufacturing, transportation, food, petrochemical, e-commerce logistics, third party logistics, pharmaceutical and other fields.