The lift truck of the future?
Imagine a forklift without the driver, without the engine, without the mast, without anything but some snazzy, new fangled forks. Imagine no longer.
Eisenmann and a leading German food retailer have signed a cooperation agreement that will enable the testing and refinement of innovative technology for material handling. The company will supply two pilot systems based on LogiMovers – twin-tined, automated guided pallet conveyors. The stated goal of both parties is to take the LogiMover from prototype to marketable product.
The first LogiMovers will be deployed at a German logistics centre operated by the food retailer before the end of the year. As a company representative explains: “We hope to leverage LogiMover to achieve a higher degree of automation in our logistics processes, and to boost efficiency.”
The unique, patented twin-tine vehicle lifts pallets off the floor and takes them to a target location – entirely without manual intervention. In the first phase of the project, relatively simple tasks will be tested and refined; during the second phase, more complex logistics challenges will be addressed.
“The cooperation agreement is very important to us. It provides a reliable basis for planning, plus the guarantee that the LogiMover will meet customers’ real-world requirements when it goes into production,” underlines Ralf Weiland, Senior Vice President, Conveyor Systems, at Eisenmann. “This contract enables us to partner with a key and experienced customer, and to jointly work to improve logistics processes.”
The technology was developed by the Institute for Transport Technology and Logistics (ITTL) at the University of Stuttgart.
Professor Karl-Heinz Wehking explains: “Over the coming years we will see a change-over from vehicles such as forklifts and distribution carriages to novel small vehicles. This paradigm shift in intralogistics can be observed worldwide. In German research institutes, a very clear move towards small, intelligent, autonomous devices with decentralised guidance can be noted.”
The system weighs 80kg and is expected to be able to lift pallets of up to 1,000kg and to move them at a speed of up to 1 m/s. The forks fit comfortably into the open space under a Euro-Pallet. The tines ride on four wheels of their own, each of which has its own electric motor. The wheels can move forwards, backwards and rotate independently of the others. Each skid has sensors and a control unit. To lift a pallet, every wheel has a jack. The idea is that the autonomous skids will transport pallets and then lifts will heave them on to and off pallet racking.
