What market pain points should an excellent unmanned forklift system solve?

According to statistics from the Special Equipment Safety Supervision Bureau of the State Administration for Market Regulation, a total of 221 on-site special motor vehicle accidents occurred nationwide from 2015 to 2019, resulting in 209 deaths and 44 injuries, with a fatal accident rate as high as 94.57%. Most forklift accidents are caused by human factors — unlicensed operation, operation with faults, excessive speed, over-limit loading, mixed loading of people and goods, and risky transportation of dangerous chemicals, etc. To maximize the avoidance of forklift accidents, unmanned forklift operation is the best solution.

However, why has the unmanned forklift been launched on the market for several years but has not yet been widely popularized and applied?

According to data from the China Mobile Robot (AGV) Industry Alliance and statistics from the New Strategy Mobile Robot Industry Research Institute, the sales volume of Chinese forklift-type mobile robots (including visual navigation) reached 5,000 units in 2020, an increase of 85% over the previous year, of which about 3,400 units were laser reflector products. Although the sales volume of unmanned forklifts is gradually increasing in the market, compared with the total forklift market sales of up to 800,000 units in 2020, its volume is really negligible. Obviously, there are some market pain points in material handling that unmanned forklifts have not yet solved, so the process of their application and popularization is so slow.

Pain Point 1: Demand for Highly Flexible Material Handling

At present, there are mainly 4 technical routes for unmanned forklift navigation systems: magnetic track navigation, QR code navigation, laser reflector navigation and natural navigation. Among them, the first three navigation solutions mainly rely on markers. Although the technology is relatively mature, they are only suitable for simple indoor operation scenarios, have requirements for environment construction, have great limitations in application, and cannot meet the personalized warehousing and handling needs of most users. Unmanned forklifts adopting natural navigation solutions, although not relying on external hardware and having high flexibility and site adaptability, have the highest technical threshold at present.

Based on independently developed multi-line lidar, we have built a world-leading 3D SLAM navigation system for unmanned forklifts. Through advanced multi-sensor fusion algorithms, the forklift can achieve high-precision positioning in various complex scenarios, create high-precision 3D maps of the operation scenarios, and realize flexible path planning according to different tasks without additional positioning accessories or site modification.

Positioning accuracy is the foundation for the unmanned forklift system to realize various flexible autonomous handling operations, and it is also the core of the technical research of the unmanned forklift 3D SLAM navigation system. The system uses lidar to scan 3D point cloud data in real time, fuses it with odometer, IMU, etc., and performs high-precision matching and positioning on the scene map. The output positioning frequency after fusion is as high as 50Hz, which can meet the positioning requirements in fast-moving scenarios; in indoor scenarios, the average positioning accuracy of the system during navigation is within 2cm, and the repeat positioning accuracy of task points is <1cm; in outdoor large scenarios, the average navigation and positioning accuracy of the system is within 5cm, and the repeat positioning accuracy of task points is <2cm; under the condition that the environmental change is not more than 30%, the system can maintain stable positioning accuracy. (Note: The above are the empirical positioning accuracy data based on the software algorithm level. The actual positioning accuracy achieved by the unmanned forklift will vary according to the driver performance and chassis execution.)

Pain Point 2: Indoor and Outdoor Shuttle Handling Scenarios

At present, the mainstream navigation solutions of unmanned forklifts on the market are mainly suitable for indoor use. In fact, in addition to internal warehouse logistics, handling between warehouses and outdoor containers is also a very important link. To realize truly automated forklift handling operations, the indoor and outdoor handling routes must be connected.

In response to this, the unmanned forklift 3D SLAM navigation system can freely switch between indoor and outdoor navigation modes based on its advanced lidar environment perception technology, flexibly enter and exit containers to perform loading and unloading operations, and fully open up the global unmanned loading and unloading operation line between indoor and outdoor for forklift users. At present, this solution has entered several logistics warehouses for field testing and has passed the environmental test of complex handling channels.

Pain Point 3: High Cost Investment

Unmanned forklifts can work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, which is obviously more efficient than manual operations. However, at present, the cost of the laser reflector navigation system is still high, with a set price of nearly 300,000 yuan. Moreover, once adopted, the warehouse cannot be randomly reorganized according to the adjustment of production needs during the period. Relying on the leading hardware and software cost advantages, the unmanned forklift 3D SLAM navigation system can control the product price of forklift manufacturers within 200,000 yuan.

It is assumed that a warehouse invests 10 electric forklifts, laser reflector navigation forklifts, and 3D SLAM laser navigation forklifts respectively, and conducts a comparative analysis of investment return based on 5-year depreciation. Obviously, the input cost of manually operated electric forklifts is the highest, and the economic return benefit is the lowest; although the cost of a single laser reflector navigation forklift is high, the total input after the 5-year depreciation period is still 1.5385 million yuan less than that of manually operated electric forklifts, a cost reduction of nearly 32%; while the total 5-year input cost of unmanned forklifts adopting the 3D SLAM laser navigation solution is only 1.3187 million yuan, which saves 73% of the input cost and 59% of the time cost compared with manually operated electric forklifts. In addition, the warehouse can be flexibly expanded or adjusted during the five years, fully meeting the changing needs of the customer terminal market in the industrial internet era, and having more prominent comprehensive benefits!

In addition, we also provide a supporting intelligent multi-machine scheduling system, which can formulate the work tasks and navigation paths of vehicles in the scene in real time according to the tasks issued by the ERP/WMS warehouse management system, as well as the operation status of unmanned forklifts in the scene and the scene map. Based on the principle of priority to efficiency and time, it optimally allocates the work tasks and navigation paths of each forklift, helping users maximize the efficiency of unmanned handling management.