How Still foresees and defines the future of intralogistics

Autonomy varies by industry
Automation is the future – managers of Slovak production and warehouse operations are already convinced of this. About two years ago, Still conducted a survey among its customers and more than half of them said that they wanted more than 60 percent of their processes to be automated by 2025, and about a quarter wanted complete automation.

These are ambitious plans, especially considering that more than half of those surveyed said that they did not have a single automated process yet. However, the answers show how important this topic is for many entrepreneurs and how they estimate where they will end up in a few years.

Since the expectations of many business owners are really high and fundamental, let's explain what exactly automation and autonomy are and what the differences are between them.

To a large extent, everything depends on the area or industry. For example, for the automotive industry, there is already a kind of scale that has different levels of vehicle control, distinguishing between, for example, “a driver who does not need to use his feet to control the machine and the vehicle accelerates and brakes itself” (which is level 2) and “the driver does not have to look at the route in some sections” (which is level 4).

But to what extent can such a categorization be meaningfully applied to autonomous robots in the warehouse? They face completely different challenges than vehicles on the road. The expert committee for autonomous transport vehicles of the Association of German Engineers (VDI) submitted a proposal with some sensible criteria at the end of 2021.

These include ten functions that could be used to determine the extent to which an “automatically guided vehicle” (AGV) works autonomously:

Can it navigate independently in open spaces?

How well does it avoid obstacles?

How precisely can it place the load on the shelf?

These questions show how autonomy is defined in industry: In the case of an autonomous car, it is rather secondary whether the vehicle follows the car in front at consistently precise distances - distances in road traffic are more generous.

In intralogistics, however, it is a matter of centimeters, often even millimeters, when, for example, a robot stops in front of a shelf to store or pick up goods.

In a warehouse, it is literally a matter of centimeters
However, the reality in Slovakia is that only a very small amount of warehouse space is located in newly built halls that have grown on a so-called "green field", where everything can be planned from the very beginning so that it is ideally adapted to intralogistics processes.

The vast majority of warehouse halls and spaces in Slovakia, where Still experts come to automate processes, have already been built, and therefore they must know how to best and most effectively integrate new processes. And this also has a major impact on automation.

Warehouses are often full of people, pallets are not stored in the right place, or there are various other seemingly insignificant things that significantly interfere with everyday life in a warehouse operation.

In such an environment with many obstacles, autonomous trucks have to deal with unpredictable situations in the most predictable way possible.

“An intelligent robot constantly perceives its surroundings and then adapts its behavior based on its findings,” says Volker Viereck, Head of Development of Intelligent Autonomous Software at Still, who, together with his team, is dedicated to the topic of intelligent autonomous AMR robots and innovations in this area.

The robot can deal with unforeseen situations reactively, i.e. move to the left if there is an obstacle on the right, and move to the right if there is little space on the left. It can even use all its knowledge to assess what behavior would be optimal for the current situation and then make its own decisions.

When a truck plans and implements options in advance
A good example is a forklift truck that can, without external assistance, detect that it has stopped a few centimeters more to the left of the shelf to pick up its load and then corrects itself. "However, it would probably be more efficient if the truck noticed that its target was slightly off when approaching and corrected it in advance," explains Harald Bergermann, head of solutions design, who has been working with AGVs for 34 years and is constantly navigating between perfect ideas and warehouse reality.

An autonomous truck should not stop, but should use various information to find the best possible solution for what it should do. Ideally, it should even be able to recognize whether a person is the obstacle and whether it is enough to honk and wait for the person to step aside.

Sensors and software are already at a technical level that makes such decisions easier: some types of handling technology recognize their surroundings using various sensors, including 3D cameras.

“In addition, we are constantly developing solutions based on artificial intelligence (AI) so that the various systems can coordinate with each other,” says Viereck. Together with his team, he has already developed the first autonomous forklift for Still, which constantly cooperates with its human companion.

Automated handling technology that follows a defined route is ideally suited to so-called greenfield warehouses. This means an environment that is adapted to the use of vehicles so that they can process their orders without interruption and without unplanned situations.

In such ideal conditions, trucks with a relatively low degree of autonomy can even be more efficient. This is precisely because autonomous vehicles are intelligent enough to leave their ideal route in the event of obstacles – which, however, results in a loss of time.

“The customer can decide,” emphasizes Viereck: “Do I want particularly high efficiency or do I need systems that can handle everything without having to spend money on building a new hall?” This room for maneuver is very attractive to many customers, and combinations of autonomous and automated solutions are also a matter of course.

Customers and manufacturers should communicate and exchange information as intensively as possible in order to jointly develop the most attractive applications. While the automotive industry, with its high number of units in the millions, can more easily integrate new functions into costs, intralogistics depends on customers who create clear financial added value thanks to autonomous trucks.

Autonomy is no longer a technology of the distant future, but is here and it is real. Also in Slovakia.