Robots …. everywhere!

Looking at the future of intralogistics? The fact that robots will play a very important role here is clear to everyone. But with Shentong STO Express already so many rumbling around that it resembles an ant heap. In two warehouses in Hangzhou (East China), the equipment is used to sort up to 200,000 packages per day. People put the packages on the small autonomous transporter, which drives under the next barcode reader and finally to the right hole in the ground. There the charge is tilted in. Let us hope that in the cellar everything does not have to be put together again.

If the device requires new juice for the battery, then it goes naturally of course to the next outlet. Colleagues take over during the break.

Hikvision is the name of the robot manufacturer – also located in Hangzhou. They are available in small (as seen in the video) or large enough to transport an entire car or a pallet. In various press reports it can be seen that the costs were halved and the efficiency was increased by 30% – with even fewer sorting errors.

The devices resemble the robotic robots of  Amazon Robotics , formerly known as Kiva Robots ( we reported in the blog some years ago about it ).

China has launched a major automation initiative. Hundreds of thousands of robots are to be produced annually in the People’s Republic. Foxconn – known as a contract manufacturer for well-known smartphone brands – has already used 60,000 robots in its own production, thus replacing human labor. However, there are certainly still many left over from the 1.3 million employees counted in 2015.

Picture source: Video by Peoples Daily, More information:  Hikvision Robots , South China Morning Post , Amazon Robotics , STO