How would it affect your business if you could lower your warehouse labor expenditures by 50% or more, add 24 hour shifts that significantly boost your production capacity and have instant availability to troves of live information on every aspect of your facility? Warehouse robotics systems can help you reshape your business, slashing expenses, increasing output and enhancing performance.

Types of Warehouse Robots

Although some types of warehouse robotics solutions have been available for a very long time, others are cutting-edge solutions that have the potential to fundamentally change the warehousing industry as we know it. The primary categories of robotics system are:

Articulated Robotic Arms: Robotic arms with multiple joints can grasp and move goods in a warehouse. They're often applied to receiving operations, such as moving items from pallets to racks, or in production scenarios, for picking and shipping.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: Unmanned aerial vehicles, conventionally know as drones, can deliver real-time inventory data in a warehouse by leveraging RFID technology.

Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems (AS/RS) : AS/RS can collect inventory from shelves and put items in their appropriate storage slots. 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 human labor to pick items from storage locations, G2P technology uses robots to deliver goods to picking stations, where employees are stationed to fill orders as items are delivered.

Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) : AGVs, such as self-driving forklifts, carts or pallet jacks, transfer goods between areas inside a warehouse. Cart based AGVs are often referred to as Automatic Guided Carts, or AGCs.

Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) : Similar to AGCs and AGVs, Autonomous Mobile Robots can transfer goods across a facility autonomously. Unlike AGCs and AGVs, which move along set routes often guided by wire tracks or magnetic strips, AMRs make use of cameras, maps and sensors to maneuver non-static routes by evaluating their surroundings.

Applications For Warehouse Robots

Until recently, robotic applications in distribution centers and warehouses, warehouses and distribution centers were limited to a handful of jobs. As technology has evolved, robotic capabilities have exploded and they can now be used for almost any function in a warehouse:

Loading and unloading: While complete automation of unloading and loading trucks is not yet a possibility, automated systems like conveyors and AGVs can be employed to augment your loading dock speed.

Palletizing and de-palletizing: Robotic systems are well suited for tedious, repetitive functions like palletizing. These types of robots generally employ a specific End-of-Arm Tool to pick up units and position them on a pallet. They're frequently used in combination with with conveyors that transport items to the palletizing area.

Sorting: Robotic sortation systems must have the ability to grab products, identify them and deposit them in a suitable storage slot or bin. As products move along a conveyor, these systems use cameras to track specific items and pick them out.

Picking: Most of the labor expenses in a warehouse originate from picking activities, and robotic picking tehnologies have been around for many years to help address this concern. Nevertheless, today's robotic picking systems offer greater speed, better accuracy, more efficiency and superior value as compared to systems of just a few years ago.

Packaging: Robotic solutions are well suited for repetitive and monotonous tasks like packaging. They may also be used for more complicated jobs like weighing, dimensioning and cartonizing.

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

Storage: AS/RS implementations emoby several categories of warehouse robots, including mini-load systems, cranes and pallet shuttles. AS/RS is also sometimes used in combination with mobile racking systems to maximize space utilization.

Delivery: Large e-com companies are testing autonomous delivery drones, self-driving trucks and other emerging tech that will revolutionize home and warehouse delivery options in the coming years.

Replenishment: Using RFID to keep track of inventory, warehouse drones can survey barcode labels up to 50% faster than manual scanning and communicate inventory information back to the WMS instantaneously.

Industrial Robotics Companies Near Me

If you're interested in learning more about industrial robotic solutions for your warehouse, speak with an automation expert at Raymond West today!

Raymond West's Riverside service area includes Redlands, Colton, Rialto, Bloomington, Moreno Valley, Hemet, Perris, Lake Elsinore, Menifee, Coachella Valley and all surrounding areas.

Raymond West | Riverside Material Handling Equipment Supplier

Riverside, CA
(951) 384-2444