Imagine slashing your warehouse labor expenses by 50% or more, adding 24 x 7 shifts that could potentially double your productivity and having instant availability of troves of real-time information on all aspects of your material handling operation. Warehouse robotics systems can help you transform your business, reducing expenditures, supercharging production and strengthening efficiency.

Types of Warehouse Robots

While some types of warehouse robotics systems have been available for many years, others are cutting-edge solutions that may disrupt the warehousing and distribution industry as we know it. The principal types of robotics system are:

Articulated Robotic Arms: Robotic arms with multiple joints can grasp and move products in a warehouse. They're typically applied to receiving operations, like moving goods from pallets to racks, or in production settings, for picking and packing.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: Unmanned aerial vehicles, more commonly referred to as drones, can deliver live inventory insight in a facility by using RFID technology.

Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems (AS/RS) : AS/RS can pick up goods from shelves and put items in their appropriate storage slots. Examples of AS/RS solutions are cranes that retrieve goods between aisles, vertical or horizontal carousel systems and shuttle systems.

Goods-to-Person technology (G2P): In lieu of using human labor to pick items from bins and racks, G2P solutions employ robots to supply items to picking stations, where workers are stationed to fulfill orders as products are delivered.

Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) : AGVs, like self-driving pallet jacks, forklift or carts, move inventory between locations inside a warehouse. Cart based AGVs are often referred to as AGCs, or Automatic Guided Carts.

Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) : Similar to AGCs and AGVs, Autonomous Mobile Robots can move goods throughout a warehouse autonomously. In contrast to AGVs and AGCs, which traverse stationary routes often directed by wire tracks or magnetic strips, AMRs rely on maps, cameras and sensors to negotiate more flexible routes by analyzing their surroundings.

Applications For Warehouse Robots

Until recently, robotic applications in warehouses were confined to a handful of functions. As technology has evolved, robotic capabilities have exploded and they can now be used for nearly any function in a warehouse:

Loading and unloading: Although full automation of unloading and loading trucks is not yet a reality, automated systems like AGVs and conveyors can be employed to enhance your loading dock speed.

Palletizing and de-palletizing: Robotic systems are perfect for monotonous, repetitive work like palletizing. These types of robots typically make use of a dedicated End-of-Arm Tool to pick up items and set them on a pallet. They're often paired with conveyors that supply items to the palletizing area.

Sorting: Robotic sortation systems must have the ability to pick up products, identify them and put them in an appropriate bin or storage slot. As products advance along a conveyor, these systems use cameras to identify specific items and pick them out.

Picking: Most of the labor expenses in a warehouse originate from picking functions, and robotic picking tehnologies have been around for quite some time to help address this issue. Nevertheless, contemporary robotic picking systems offer increased speed, better accuracy, enhanced efficiency and far better value versus systems of even a few years ago.

Packaging: Robotic solutions are well suited for repetitive and tedious functions like packaging. They can also be put to use for more advanced jobs like dimensioning, weighing and cartonizing.

Transportation: Robotic transportation systems have wide-scale use in warehouses, from simple AGVs / AGCs to AMRs and conveyor systems that are integrated with AS/RS.

Storage: AS/RS implementations incorporate many types of warehouse robots, including cranes, pallet shuttles and mini-load systems. AS/RS is also sometimes used together with mobile racking systems to optimize space utilization.

Delivery: Leading e-com businesses are experimenting with self-driving trucks, autonomous delivery drones and other emerging tech that will revolutionize last mile delivery options in the near future.

Replenishment: Using RFID to keep track of inventory, warehouse drones can scan barcode labels in half the time of manual scanning and communicate stock data back to the warehouse management system instantaneously.

Industrial Robotics Companies Near Me

To find out more about industrial robotic solutions for your business, speak with an automation expert at Raymond West today!

Raymond West's Long Beach service area includes Long Beach, North Long Beach, Wilmington, San Pedro, Lomita, Torrance and nearby surrounding areas.

Raymond West | Long Beach Material Handling Equipment Supplier

Long Beach
(562) 444-1222