VisionNav

VisionNav Robotics for Industrial Vehicles

[visionnav]

Today is the last day of 2021, VisionNav has also experienced a lot of troubles and progresses in the year, thanks for the continuous support from our reliable partners, customers as well as our dear colleagues. May you all have a healthy and unforgettable happy new year's eve today! #visionnav #AGV #AGF #automation #robotics #happynewyear2022 #2022iscoming

[visionnav]

VisionNav Robotics has helped a listed company realize the operation of automation #AGF (automated guided forklift),   and we have taken  solution of Pallet Stacker Forklift + Robot Control System for this amazing upgrading.#forklift #warehouse #logistics #agv #agf #pallet #stacker https://www.visionnav.com/articledetail/110.html

[visionnav]

VisionNav Robotics Has Implemented Large-scale “Deep-water” Unmanned Logistics Applications In 2021

https://www.visionnav.com/articledetail/109.html

[visionnav]

VisionNav's New Driverless forklift (AGF) debuts at Logis-Tech Tokyo 202...

[visionnav]

VisionNav products ready for Logist-Tech Tokyo（The 2nd)

Wanna see our new driverless conterbalanced forklift (AGF)? Come to Logist-Tech Tokyo（The 2nd) held in Tokyo Big Sight from Oct.13rd to 15th, 2021. Find the Booth A-102 of "岡谷鋼機", our business partner in Japan.

[visionnav]

We have closed a $50M C Round from Bytedance, Shunwei Capital (co-founded by Xiaomi CEO Leijun), CICC (China Unicom), IDG Capital, Lenovo Ventures and Eastern bell Capital. Congratulations to our team! This round of funding will be mainly used to increase #AGF products scenario development in deep-water scenarios, standardize delivery and layout global scale applications.

[visionnav]

Why is AGV forklift trustworthy? 360 degree protection plus non-stop pow...

[visionnav]

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!

[visionnav]

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

Part2:   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.

[visionnav]

Express | Today the technical team from #Jungheinrich visit #VisionNav Robotics headquarters. Both teams discussed friendly about visual navigation technology of the #forkliftAGV and the principle of forklift controlling! Looking forward to the further cooperation!

[visionnav]

forklift AGVs application in 3PL area with automatic charging function

[visionnav]

Exhibition review: First show of our Technology in CeMAT 2019. 6 months after this show, Auto Racks Stacking becomes a new option for more and more automobile manufacturers.

https://visionnavroboitcs.blogspot.com/2020/05/review-visionnav-robotics-first-show.html

[visionnav]

With vision technology, VisionNav Robotics is solving something in real demands with its forklift AGVs

In the new era of unmanned logistics, warehousing becomes initial strategic point

Unmanned technology has become a heated topic in logistics industry since the beginning of the year 2020. The epidemic outbreak hits existing industries real hard, but also brings some opportunities –the restarting driverless vehicles are setting off another wave of robots replacing human. With expedited release of market demands and the support of technology and capital, unmanned logistics will enter a new era.

Looking from its overall structure, a logistics system can be viewed as a crisscrossed network, the connected nodes are logistics centers, enterprise warehouses and regional distribution points, and the interlaced lines are transportation services such as trunk transportation, branch transportation, and last-mile delivery. While road transportation using self-driving cars is still in the attempt, the technology of automatic warehousing seems to be more mature and is gradually becoming a strategic move in unmanned logistics.

Figure: Unmanned Logistics Full View

Forklift AGV has great potential with increasing needs of unmanned transportation inside the warehouse

Driven by market demands, technology development and other multiple factors, the unmanned process to replace traditional warehouse system has been accelerated. Automatic equipment inside a warehouse mainly include automatic sorting robots, wearable devices, cargo identification devices and forklift AGVs. While automatic sorting technology is still developing, cargo identification techniques are work-in-process, the most mature forklift AGVs with high cost-effective are much more popular.

According to the data released by CITA, the total sales volume of industrial vehicles in China are more than 600,000 units in 2019, indicating 2% increase compared to the previous year. Thereinto, about 298,600 units are forklifts in indoor warehouses, which makes up 43% of the total number. In addition, there is a growing trend for forklift in recent years. With the gradual deepening of “robots replacing human”, demands for forklift AGVs will be more and more obvious indicating a huge market potential.

Figure: 2019 Industrial Vehicles Total Sales Volume in China

 Complicated Intensive Storage Scenarios Are What Forklift AGVs Needs to Overcome

When it comes to operations inside the warehouse, there are mainly 2 scenarios for forklift AGVs to replace manual forklifts: 1. truck loading, different trucks such as cube, wing opening, flatbed, etc., in the environment of loading platform, factory/ in-house or container yard; 2. Intensive storage scenarios, including drive-in racks, beam type racks, narrow aisle racks, double deep racks, shuttle racks, stack racks and other pallet racking. With the deepening of automation integration and unmanned conditions getting mature, indoor intensive storage become the main scenarios to use Forklift AGVs.

Figure: 6 Types of Racking in Intensive Storage

“Space utilization of intensive storage for middle or high level racking is relatively high, making it one of the major storage types at present. Besides, complicated working condition of intensive storage scenarios raises higher requirement for forklift AGV at the same time.” said Dr. Li Luyang, CEO of VisionNav Robotics, one of the representative enterprises for visual driverless industrial vehicles in China. These requirements mainly are:

1) Higher accuracy: considering task completion and safety in the warehouse operations, there are higher requirements for forklift AGV in terms of positioning accuracy and operation accuracy.

2) High flexibility: forklift AGVs need to improve the flexibility and self-adaptability in order to cope with non-standardized manual operations, changes of different carriers, changes of operating space, etc.

3) High efficiency: as the entire logistics industry is speeding up, the advantage of forklift AGVs replacing manual forklifts is mainly lies in its efficiency.

4) Safety protection: the overall protection is not only to identify and avoid obstacles during the driving, but also to consider risks in high position and high-level racks operations, for example for safer technology is required for drive-in racks, narrow aisle racks, moveable stack racks, etc., to protect human, vehicles and goods.

 With vision techniques, forklift AGVs can be widely applied in intensive storage scenarios

      To solve current problems faced by forklift AGVs in the intensive storage scenarios, we must highly rely on in-depth researches and innovations. When talking about industry development, Mr. Chen Baoqiang, deputy director of the National Engineering Quality Supervision and Inspection Center, emphasized the importance of in-depth technology innovations. “Lack of innovation means lack of driving force for industry progress. There will be no innovation without in-depth research.”

      Dr. Li Luyang also said during an interview with the reporter from XZL Robot Full-media, that the urgent tasks for forklift AGVs is to improve their level of intelligence. “You can simply view it as the robot ability to deal with non-standardized situations onsite, which is definitely based on the understanding and learning of the environment. Therefore vision technology is now the only way to improve forklift AGV intelligence, which is also what VisionNav Robotics has been working on for the past 3 years since the establishment.”

Figure: Vision Navigation Forklift AGVs for High Position from VisionNav Robotics

Visual sensors is also one of the heated topics in the fields of unmanned forklift researches. Compared to traditional laser sensors, visual sensors have stronger abilities of information acquisition, and better systematic expandability: (1) there are 5 million points of information in a 5-megapixel photo, and if 10 photos are acquired and processed in a second, it is equivalent to acquiring 50 million points of information; (2) the points in the photo contain more information than laser such as colors and patterns, providing a large amount of valuable information for positioning, control and environmental perception; (3) the perfect combination of vision and 5G in the future enable us to transmit image information to the cloud through high speed network for edge computing, or transmit to the serve for parallel computing, further improving the performance of vision navigation by a large margin.”

It is learned that VisionNav Robotics has been working deeply in the fields of vision navigation technology. With its unique techniques, rapid growth and strong explosive ability, VisionNav Robotics is the first company to complete reach truck unmanned modification and application for high level operation. They also overcome the challenges of stacking racks up to 4 levels precisely, which is one of the most difficult operations in the fields. Such stacking techniques have already been practically applied in an automatic warehouse of an auto parts manufacturer giant in South China. For the past 3 years, vision navigation forklift AGVs developed by VisionNav Robotics have been accumulated applied in over 150 complicated scenarios, including automatically picking and placing cargos from/to middle and high levels in domestic intensive warehouses of many leading enterprises in logistics, bonded, FMCG and other industries.

Application 1: Vision Navigation Forklift AGVs from VisionNav Robotics and its Application of Stacking Racks

Application 2: Vision Navigation Forklift AGVs from VisionNav Robotics and its Application in High Level Beam Type Racks

It is reported that VisionNav Robotics will further focus on the common requirements and pain points of forklift AGVs, developing applications for outdoor truck loading, improving application range and depth of driverless industrial vehicles, and providing highly effective solutions to more and more enterprises

[visionnav]

Product Testing of forklift AGV VNMR15

Sharing our latest video of our latest forklift AGV VNMR15 with: 1) Vision navigation 2) Cargo identification 3) 3m lifting height 4) ultra+ laser scanner 5) automatic label scanning 6) automatic charging Your best choice for low-level rack shelves in the warehouse!

[visionnav]

Abstract: Affected by the change of international automotive consumption structure, OBM dynamically adjust their capital investment in R&D, manufacturing, management and many other aspects. Flexibly automatic warehousing solution has become the first choice of many B-end customers because it can increase storage capacity and reduce unit storage cost.

                                Figure: Warehouse of Auto Parts

 Rigid Transportation Demand for Auto Parts Manufacturer

A few days ago, VisionNav Robotics completed the implementation of an unmanned warehousing solution for a auto parts manufacturer giant in South China. The company is a Sino-Japanese joint venture with an area of nearly 130,000 square meters. There are more than 1,500 employees and the total number of storage locations per floor is more than 5,000. Its main business includes manufacturing of stamping and welding parts for car body, the design and manufacture of stamping die for the covers of car body, tire of the car, car fixtures, design and manufacturing of inspection device, etc., which indicates huge demands of material handling.

Figure: Automotive Auto Part Production Line

 Unmanned Stacking Solution for Stamping Die for the Covers of Car Body

There are multifarious types of auto parts in the factory. Welding workshop of car body covers and finished goods stockpiling area are located in a square area on the first floor. After finishing stamping, welding, quality inspection and other production processes in the central area, each 10-12 parts will be put into the same frame and manually transported to the nearby temporary stockpiling area. All the trucks are waiting at corresponding platform for loading and then send to downstream final-assembly workshop for car assembly process. Because the size of auto parts are so different, there are 50 different types of material frame in use for storage in the factory.

Figure: Irregular Auto Parts

 There is an independent storage unit every 100 square meters in stockpiling area, equipped with 2 pallet forklifts and one counterbalance forklift for frame stacking and loading to the truck in the unit. People who working From production to storage, people who are working in the entire process involves welding workers, stamping workers, quality inspectors, material handlers between production lines and storage area, forklift drivers, and on-site dispatch workers. In order to adapt to production cycle time, the factory is running three shifts operation.

Figure: Auto Parts Stockpiling Area

 Business Pain Point

From the lean production prospect, there are significant wastes during the production activities, which can be summarized as below:

① Redundant transportation —— unnecessary goods movements;

② Waiting —— it’s easy to have “traffic jam” during the peak of delivery bringing waiting; Late delivery or service in upstream production activities causes work delay in downstream final assembly workshop, which thereby will have impact material deployment plan for the next cycle.

③ Excess operation —— unnecessary operation during the work; Operators need to confirm twice before loading to the truck, such extra process reduces working efficiency.

④ Manual forklift varies in operation efficiency, it takes less than 2 minutes to stack the first 2-3 level of the cages, but working efficiency drops at a rate of 50% for 4-6 level due to the changes of the height and angle.

The above four factors are positively related to the number of on-site personnel, therefore optimizing transportation process, reducing personnel and keep the balance of transportation during the operation become the focus of our consideration

Figure: Workers Manually Transport the Goods

 Unmanned Warehouse Solution

We provide solutions considering four aspects, which is functional positioning, process optimization, personnel streamlining and equipment upgrading:

All stockpiling areas will be divided into function units of 100 square meters. 7 units which are closer to the outbound platform is used for quick deliver and only keeping ready-to-go cages for the day. Other finished goods will be stored uniformly into the stockpiling units that away from the platform.

Set up fixed route for material transfer from production line to stockpiling area, and use 8 pallet forklift AGV to complete the transportation, not including truck loading. Travel distance for each vehicle is no more than 100 meters.

-      Use 1 VisionNav Robotics counterbalanced forklift AGV to stack cages automatically in each stockpiling unit. Not using manual forklift anymore, and it will only takes 1 operator to work 3 shifts in each stockpiling unit.

-      For the problem of different cage specification, adding self-adaptive fork arm function in the automated forklift enable to accurately fork and pile cages according to different distance and height in three dimensions.

-     

GIF: Operation of the Unmanned Forklift

Overall Benefits

Carrier: the number of manual forklift and forklift driver reduce by N-1 when using unmanned forklift;

Flow Direction: clearer flow direction from production line to stockpiling units has been specified to reduce waiting time and traffic jam of the forklifts

Capacity: unmanned forklift works continuously and completes stacking of 600-700 material cages stably every day;

Flow Travel: save 1km driving mileage for each forklift

Flow Efficiency: stabilize the supply to downstream components, reduce the fluctuation range of the production and distribution plan, and improve overall production efficiency by 70%

Figure: Automated Stacking Operation Area

 Automated Stacking Solution for Car Tyres

Considering the great benefit of cage stacking in the first phase, currently customer plans to launch the second phase project, car tyres unmanned transportation. The transportation process for the tyres is relatively simple. The warehouse is mainly for storage; and all the tires are packed into material cages of same size and specification. There are 10 tyres in each cage and the height of a cage is about 1.5m. The idea is to have 6 cages stacking on top of each other in each location to maximum the utilization of storage space.

The biggest problem is when stacking to 4-6 layers, the operation efficiency of manual forklift drops dramatically, while coefficient of unsafety increases. The solution from VisionNav Robotics is to use their reach forklift AGV, which is capable for 9m stacking. It takes on average 15 minutes for each process, and such stability becomes the biggest advantage when no rush delivery is required. 

GIF: A Demonstration of Stacking 3 Layer Cages for Car Tyre

Technology of Irregular Part Unmanned Transportation Scenario Is Mature Now

For manufacturing industry, stacking material cages / frames is rigid demand. Compared to the racks, cages can make better use of the space in a warehouse. For low level stacking (2-3 layers), manual forklift have more advantage than unmanned forklift; for high level stacking (4-6 layers), however, unmanned forklift have more advantage in turn. The advantage of VisionNav Robotics unmanned forklift lies in its fork arm self-adaptive adjustment, and real time positioning deviation correction, which can bring stable efficiency to load and unload goods every time, and lower operational danger. It’s a great benefit for plants and warehouses with large areas and large scale of massive production.

VisionNav Robotics have rich experience on handling complicated scenarios, we’ve identified and stack cages and frames with over 150 specifications accurately and automatically so far. Recently, VisionNav Robotics is preparing a new test for irregular part unmanned transportation project. Apart from the iteration of fork arm self-adaptive function 2.0 version, the algorithm about robot control and perception level has also been optimize and upgraded. And for further information, please stay tune and find more details in the upcoming application updates.

[visionnav]

New forklift AGV Product Testing: Automatic Walkie Stacker

VisionNav Robotic automatic material handling solution is based on industrial driverless technology. By bringing transportation robots into structured / semi-structured scenarios and providing unmanned transformation for existing industrial vehicles (forklifts, tractors, etc.), it can do unmanned horizontal transportation, stacking, palletizing and unified management of the good. It can completely replace all the manual operation and provide scientific and centralized technical support for enterprises in production, transportation and storage management.

website:www.visionnav.cn Email:[email protected]

[visionnav]

"why we only work on unmanned forklifts and persist in this field for three years"?

[Review News-pick up the days we Missed You.] Sinotrans "Smart Logistics" Delegation Visited VisionNav Robotics to Accelerate Corporation for New Projects. "why we only work on unmanned forklifts and persist in this field for three years"?

Answers here → https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5385532830551402585#allposts/postNum=0