What if you could slash your warehouse workforce expenditures by up to 50%, add 24 hour shifts that could potentially double your productivity and have access to troves of live information on all aspects of your operation? Warehouse robotics systems can help you redefine your business, reducing costs, increasing output and enhancing performance.

Types of Warehouse Robots

While some types of warehouse robotics solutions have been available for decades, others are state-of-the-art engineering marvels that could possibly fundamentally change the warehousing and distribution business 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 racking, or in production settings, for picking, packing and shipping.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: Unmanned aerial vehicles, more commonly referred to as drones, can provide real-time inventory insight in a facility through the use of RFID technology.

Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems (AS/RS) : AS/RS can retrieve inventory from bins and put items in their designated storage positions. Examples of AS/RS solutions are pallet shuttle systems, unit load cranes and horizontal or vertical carousel systems.

Goods-to-Person technology (G2P): Instead of using humans to pick items from bins and racks, G2P solutions employ robots to supply goods to picking stations, where workers are positioned to complete orders as items are delivered.

Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) : AGVs, including self-driving pallet jacks, forklift or carts, transport products between areas within a warehouse. Cart based AGVs are sometimes called Automatic Guided Carts, or AGCs.

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

Applications For Warehouse Robots

For many years, robotic applications in distribution centers and warehouses, warehouses and distribution centers were confined to a handful of taks. As technology has advanced, robotic capabilities have flourished and they can now be used for nearly any requirement in a warehouse:

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

Palletizing and de-palletizing: Robotic systems are well suited for tedious, repetitive tasks like palletizing. Palletizizing robots normally use a dedicated End-of-Arm Tool to pick up units and position them on a pallet. They're often paired with conveyors that transport items to the palletizing area.

Sorting: Robotic sortation systems must have the ability to pick up objects, identify them and put them in a suitable bin or storage slot. As goods move along a conveyor, these robots use cameras to recognize individual items and pick them out.

Picking: Most of the human labor expenses in a warehouse originate from order picking activities, and robotic picking tehnologies have been around for many years to help resolve this problem. However, today's robotic picking solutions offer increased speed, improved accuracy, more efficiency and far better value as compared to systems of even a few years ago.

Packaging: Robotic solutions are perfect for recurrent and tedious jobs like packaging. They can also be used for more complex jobs like weighing, dimensioning 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 systems incorporate several categories of warehouse robots, including pallet shuttles, mini-load systems and cranes. AS/RS is also sometimes used together with mobile racking systems to optimize storage density.

Delivery: Major e-com businesses are testing autonomous delivery drones, self-driving trucks and other emerging tech that will transform 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 relay stock counts back to the WMS instantaneously.

Industrial Robotics Companies Near Me

To find out more about industrial robotic solutions for your operation, talk to an automation expert at Raymond West today!

Raymond West's Santa Barbara County service area includes Buellton, Carpinteria, Goleta, Lompoc, Santa Barbara, Santa Maria and all surrounding areas.

Raymond West | Santa Barbara Material Handling Equipment Supplier

Santa Barbara County, CA
(805) 749-2777

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