Years ago, the only way to transport materials, parts, or inventory within a facility was manually. Personnel was hired specifically to transport material from point A to point B using either carts or forklifts. At the time, this was a necessary expense, because there simply weren’t many feasible alternatives.
Of course there have been conveyor systems. Conveyors can be incredibly efficient in transporting inventory. The issue with conveyors is lack of flexibility, as they cut off the flow of a facility. Additionally, conveyors can be costly in terms of both initial purchase price as well as maintenance. In the right application it’s perfect, but for many other applications and situations not desirable.
The next real advancement in terms of intra-warehouse or intra-operation transportation came with the development of automated guided vehicles (AGVs)—unmanned vehicles capable of traveling within a facility using a series of cameras, sensors, and magnetic strips or rails. AGVs promised to reduce labor costs by automating the repetitive and low-skill task of transportation.
At the time, it was a major step in the right direction, but it’s important to note that AGVs brought their own challenges. The main problem was similar to conveyors: A lack of flexibility. First-generation AGVs relied upon fixed paths that were very rigid and difficult to reprogram. This made them impractical for flexible operations that found themselves rapidly growing or changing to meet shifting customer demands.
Recent advancements in technology have created a new solution for material transportation in your warehouse or operation: Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs), which can in many ways be thought of as the next evolution of the AGV.
An autonomous mobile robot is any robot that can independently understand and navigate its environment without direct operator supervision or fixed route.
Using advanced sensors, AMRs interpret their surroundings and determine the most effective path to complete tasks, navigating around both fixed obstacles (like buildings, racks, or workstations) and dynamic ones (such as people, forklifts, or debris).
In warehouses and distribution centers, AMRs integrate with control systems, giving them the flexibility to chart their own routes between locations. This enables them to work dynamically with humans, making workflows faster, more efficient, and productive.
AMRs typically handle non-value-added tasks like transporting, picking up, and dropping off products, allowing human workers to focus on higher value activities like picking, checking, or packing orders.
A variety of AMRs have been designed specifically to fulfill the task of material/inventory transportation. These include tugger-bots capable of moving multiple pallets or gaylords full of product or inventory, as well as models designed to transport pallets, flowrack, cases, totes, and single units.
The primary difference between how AMRs and AGVs work comes down to flexibility: AMRs are vastly more flexible than their AGV counterparts. AGVS follow fixed routes, guided by floor-embedded wires, magnetic strips, or laser navigation systems using reflectors. While AGVs may include basic sensors to detect obstacles and stop when necessary, their navigation paths are rigid. Changes to routes often require costly and time-consuming hardware and software modifications, typically needing support from the manufacturer. In laser-guided setups, AGVs must maintain a clear line of sight to reflectors; obstructions like equipment or structural features can limit routing options.
AMRs, on the other hand, use advanced onboard sensors, cameras, and mapping software to dynamically navigate through the facility without needing floor markers or reflectors. They interpret their environment in real-time and find the most efficient paths between destinations. This flexibility allows AMRs to be quickly reprogrammed to support changing tasks or zones with minimal disruption, making them ideal for agile, fast evolving businesses.
Below are a number of examples of ways you might leverage AMRs to transport product or inventory within your facility:
The single greatest benefit of using AMRs for transportation within your facility is simple: Transporting inventory or materials is a low-skill and repetitive task. It’s often one of the first operations targeted for automation. Automating the task with AMRs allows you to reallocate your personnel to other, higher-value tasks and reduce your overall labor costs.
Additionally, by leveraging AMRs instead of manually driven forklifts, you’ll cut down on traffic throughout your facility, especially in aisles. This typically leads to increased safety, fewer accidents, reduced shrinkage, and higher throughputs. Today’s AMRs are designed to transport individual cases, totes, and items—not just large pallets—filling a critical efficiency gap.
While you may still need to rely upon manual forklifts for some activities, your reliance will be vastly reduced. A secondary benefit of this will be that you’ll save money on your forklift fleet due to reduced leasing and maintenance costs.
For many order fulfillment operations looking to automate their intra-facility transportation, autonomous mobile robots will often prove a flexible, cost effective option. But this doesn’t mean that they will be the best option for every business.
For example, operations with exceptionally high throughput requirements may be better served by implementing a conveyor or sorter such as a tilt-tray or crossbelt sorter, which typically offer higher throughputs compared to AMRs. Of course, this increased throughput comes at its own costs: Typically in the form of an investment of floor space. In the debate over AMRs vs. conveyors, the tradeoff will almost always boil down to throughput vs. flexibility.
Then again, the answer doesn’t always need to be an either/or. For the right business, it may be possible to leverage both AMR-technology and more traditional conveyors or sorters. An example might be to use conveyors to replenish your fastest movers, while leveraging AMRs to replenish slower movers.
If you are interested in using AMRs for material transport within your operation, there are a wide variety of options based on your exact requirements.
Transporting totes or cartons from one portion of your warehouse to another with the ability to lift them off the ground and place them on the rack.
Moving pallets from one part of the facility to another.
Storing and retrieving pallets from rack and delivering them to shipping, Q&A, work cells and other locations in the facility.
Transporting carts, bins, shelving or fixtures from station to station can eliminate a tremendous amount of labor while increasing throughput.
Moving cases from one zone to another.
Tugging carts or vehicles to specific areas or cells throughout the facility.
If you are looking to automate repetitive, low-value tasks within your operation to increase efficiency and decrease costs, the good news is that there are a number of different automation technologies that can help you meet your goals. One option is autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), but others include sorters, conveyors, and more.
Before committing to AMRs, it’s essential to understand both the direct and indirect cost factors, and the short and long term benefits. That’s the only way to accurately estimate ROI and determine whether AMRs align with your operational goals. A trusted systems integrator can help you understand the differences between each of these technologies so that you are choosing the best one for your business.