Imagine reducing your warehouse workforce expenses by up to 50%, adding 24 x 7 shifts that significantly boost your production capacity and having visibility of troves of live information on all aspects of your operation. Warehouse robotics systems can help you redefine your business, reducing expenditures, supercharging productivity and enhancing performance.
Types of Warehouse Robots
While a few of warehouse robotics solutions have been available for a very long time, others are bleeding edge technologies that may bring about major changes the distribution and warehousing business as we know it. The primary categories of robotics system are:
Articulated Robotic Arms: Robotic arms with multiple joints can pick up and move goods in a warehouse. They’re commonly used for receiving tasks, like relocating products from pallets to racks, or in production settings, for picking, packing and shipping.
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: Unmanned aerial vehicles, more commonly referred to as drones, can provide instantaneous inventory data in a warehouse by leveraging RFID technology.
Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems (AS/RS) : AS/RS can pick up products from shelves and return items to their appropriate storage positions. Examples of AS/RS solutions are pallet shuttle systems, unit load cranes and horizontal or vertical carousel systems.
Goods-to-Person technology (G2P): In place of using humans to pick items from storage locations, G2P technology uses robots to deliver items to picking stations, where operators are stationed to fulfill orders as products are delivered.
Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) : AGVs, like self-driving carts, pallet jacks or forklifts, move goods from one area to another inside a warehouse. Cart based AGVs are commonly called Automatic Guided Carts, or AGCs.
Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) : Similar to AGVs and AGCs, AMRs can move products across a facility autonomously. Unlike AGCs and AGVs, which move along stationary routes often guided by magnetic strips or wire tracks, AMRs rely on cameras, maps and sensors to negotiate frequently changing routes by analyzing their surroundings.
Applications For Warehouse Robots
For many years, robotic applications in warehouses were restricted to a handful of jobs. As technology has advanced, robotic capabilities have exploded and they can now be applied to nearly any task in a warehouse:
Loading and unloading: Although full automation of loading and unloading trucks is not yet a possibility, automated systems like conveyors and AGVs can be added to enhance your loading dock efficiency.
Palletizing and de-palletizing: Robotic systems are well suited for tedious, recurrent tasks like palletizing. These types of robots normally use a special End-of-Arm Tool to pick up units and set them on a pallet. They’re commonly paired with conveyor systems that feed products to the palletizing area.
Sorting: Robotic sortation systems must be able to pick up products, recognize them and put them in the proper storage slot or bin. As goods pass by on a conveyor, these robots use cameras to identify individual items and pick them out.
Picking: Most of the human labor expenses in a warehouse come from picking activities, and robotic picking tehnologies have been around for many years to help resolve this problem. However, contemporary robotic picking technologies offer greater speed, better accuracy, more efficiency and far better value versus systems of even a few years ago.
Packaging: Robotic solutions are well suited for recurrent and monotonous tasks like packaging. They can also be put to use for more complicated jobs like dimensioning, weighing and cartonizing.
Transportation: Robotic transportation systems are widely used in warehouses, from simple AGCs/AGVs to AMRs and conveyor systems that are integrated with AS/RS.
Storage: AS/RS implementations include a variety of warehouse robots, including cranes, pallet shuttles and mini-load systems. AS/RS is also sometimes used in conjunction with mobile racking systems to maximize storage density.
Delivery: Major e-com companies are experimenting with self-driving trucks, autonomous delivery drones and other emerging tech that will transform last mile delivery options in the coming years.
Replenishment: Leveraging RFID to monitor inventory, warehouse drones can survey barcode labels in half the time of manual scanning and transmit inventory information back to the WMS instantaneously.
Industrial Robotics Companies Near Me
If would would like to learn more about industrial robotic solutions for your warehouse, call an automation expert at Welch Equipment today!
