7 Autonomous Mobile Robots Applications - Performing like Kings

With their advanced slam navigation capability, AMRs can solve problems that AGVs can’t.

 This opens up many opportunities to handle applications which AGVs would find difficult or impossible, and to gain important operational advantages for businesses. The following examples of their use will show what I  mean.

     

7 applications of AMRs that AGVs can't perform

   

Although they are similar in many ways, AMRs typically have higher levels of independent decision-making ability than AGVs – especially when it comes to navigation and path decision.

Wait a minute... if you do not know what am I talking about, In this article I explain the main differences between AGV and AMR, do not miss it. 

My name is Alfredo Pastor, I have installed many types of mobile robots in different industries and applications. These are my top 7 applications of AMRs (of course, there are others but I love these ones). 

         

In simple terms, if you put an obstacle in an AMR’s path it can navigate a way around it. In the same situation, an AGV will stick to its fixed, predetermined path, then stop and wait for the obstacle to be removed.

Basically these two features, so trackless navigation and autonomous path decision make AMRs the best option for well defined tasks.

Of course, there are other cases where agvs are more convenient, check this article with more details: Main applications of agvs .        

What are the AMR applications that make the difference? What are mobile robots used for?

These are the main applications of autonomous mobile robots: 

• Distribution Centers 
• Cleaning and Disinfection
• Autonomous Security Robots (ASRs)
• Hospitals and Healthcare
• Hospitality
• Grocery Stores
• Last Mile Delivery

 

1. AMRs in Distribution Centers

Warehouses and distribution centers are a common application of mobile robots. AMRs can be found loading and unloading boxes, transporting, stacking and retrieving palletized and other large loads.

AMRs  add greater flexibility in carrying out this work, but their superiority becomes even more evident when dealing with individual packages or items rather than whole bulk units.

I'm so convinced that I have written this article explaining into detail what can AMRs do in warehouses: Warehouse Autonomous Mobile Robots 

👑 Who's the king in this application? Of course Amazon, with robots performing many different tasks in DC's and fulfillment centers with outstanding performance levels that enables parcel delivery in less than 24H.

If you wish to know more about AMAZON, this article describes 12 different types of Amazon robots. 

👨🏼‍🏫 For relatively complex activities like order picking, AMRs can go way beyond the capabilities of AGVs.

 

 Register and download agvnetwork.com infographics about AMRs in Ecommerce DCs. 

Click here to download the infographic

Picking specific items to fulfil customer orders is the costliest of warehousing operations. In addition to its complexity and scope for errors, it is extremely time-consuming.

👨🏼‍🏫 Industry reports estimate that warehouse picking constitutes up to 55% of a distribution center’s operating costs. It makes sense to automate this tedious and costly task.

As well as having to spend time searching for the required goods, human order pickers usually find that more than half of their day is taken up just by walking (or travelling on ride-on machines) between picking locations and packing areas.

 

Anything which makes the process smoother, faster and more accurate can save hugely on operating costs.  

Another important driver toward increased speed and efficiency is the growing demand from customers for next-day or even faster delivery.

E-commerce fulfilment centers, warehouses and other businesses working to meet these expectations can use AMRs in order picking and sortation to gain a competitive advantage.

AMRs offer a variety of alternative approaches to traditional picking.

At one extreme, there are Autonomous Piece Picking Robots which actually take the place of human pickers. Having travelled to and located the requested items, they use a picking arm with a suction device at its end to pick up the goods, place them into their onboard storage space, and then transport them to the packing station.

Another strategy is to save walking time by bringing selected stock-containing units to the human picker. In this goods-to-person approach, AMRs bring a succession of containers or shelving units to the picker, who then needs only to pick out the items ordered – often with assistance of voice-guided or light-guided systems.

 Under-ride carts are commonly used for this purpose, while other possibilities include AMRs with telescopic forks.

A further category of AMRs has been developed to collect items from human pickers and take them to the packing station. In this case, each human order picker is assigned to a particular zone in the warehouse and has no need to travel between areas. AMRs move from picker to picker, collecting items needed to fulfil the orders they have been given.

Flexible sortation AMRs automate the process of diverting specific goods in a flow toward their correct destinations within the operation. Barcode scanning or other sensing systems are used to identify items so they can be directed appropriately.

At their simplest, sortation AMRs can be designed for loading and unloading by a human. For more automated operation, some are topped with a roller or belt conveyor which enables transfer of goods to and from other conveying equipment, or discharging into chutes or containers

Another discharge method is via a tilting tray on the AMR.

There are even sortation AMRs with robotic arms for collecting and discharging items.  

Given the ability of AMRs to navigate autonomously, these mobile sortation robots can be used to transfer products between any set of locations in the operation – so humans don’t have to walk or search.

They can also be used to automatically sort items into an optimum sequence. For example, items for palletizing can be arranged so that the heaviest are on the bottom, and parcels for delivery can be placed in order of address. 

 

2. Autonomous Mobile Robots for Cleaning and Disinfection   

The need for cleanliness and hygiene is now felt more strongly than ever, throughout society, as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.    

Customers today wish to be assured that premises are hygienically clean. As well as using disinfectant against disease organisms, it also pays businesses to make sure their buildings look clean and give a good impression.

AMRs offer a very cost-effective way of achieving this by deploying automated cleaning and disinfection equipment wherever it is needed.

Considering the complex shapes of any building’s surfaces and furnishings, and the likelihood that potential obstacles may suddenly appear, the autonomous navigation of an AMR is vitally important in these applications. In addition, its technology can guarantee that every square inch of the targeted area is treated.

An Automated floor scrubber removes visible dirt and can apply detergents and disinfectants for effective sanitization. Some are fitted with spraying devices for disinfection of surfaces above floor level.

 

For extra certainty, there are disinfection robots. These carry a UV light emitter which, if specified to produce the right intensity, can effectively kill viruses, bacteria and fungi within several meters of the AMR – including vertically.

If you wish to know more about, do not forget to download agvnetwork's whitepaper about UV Disinfection Robots. Just register (it's free) and download it.

  

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3. Autonomous Security Robots (ASRs)

Security is a growing market – and one which is costly in terms of labor. Autonomous security robots (ASRs) work with existing security staff – whose numbers in some cases may be cut – to fill gaps in coverage and provide a much more effective service.   

 

This picture is taken from agvnetwork.com infographics about Security Robots. You can download it here.

Fitted with camera equipment, they provide a constant stream of video and data to a control center, for monitoring and decision-making by officers stationed there.

If necessary, the ASR may be switched from autonomous to remote control mode so the officer can look more closely at anything suspicious. All video and other data collected is logged and made available for future investigation and analysis.

With the autonomous navigation ability of an AMR, ASRs can carry out patrols without the need for human intervention to deal with obstacles or changes in the environment. In addition, artificial intelligence (AI) enables them to respond appropriately to a variety of events.

  This picture is taken from agvnetwork.com infographics about Security Robots. You can download it here.

Their sensory advantages over humans may include low-light infrared vision and thermal vision, which detect activity invisible to human eyes. They may also be specified with such functions as facial and license plate recognition.

Both indoor and outdoor ASRs are available for different environments. Security teams particularly welcome their presence in remote or potentially dangerous sites, and on long night shifts. As well as carrying out surveillance, they act as a visual deterrent to criminals and can even be programmed to interact positively with members of the public.

 

4. Autonomous Robots in Hospitals & Healthcare

Robots in hospitals are step by step used for specific non-value added tasks, we can find care robots, surical robots, cleaning and disifecting robots similar to those described in the previous chapter, etc.  

Hospitals can also use AMRs in internal transport relating to items such as meals, linen, drugs, sterile supplies, cleaning equipment and waste.

  

One important advantage of these AMRs over trolleys pushed by humans is that they reduce the numbers of human movements between areas – and hence the potential for human-borne spread of viruses and bacteria.

A connected issue which AMRs help to address is traceability of materials and equipment. Data collected by the AMR on its locations and activities is sent to the AMR management system and linked to scanned data on the labelled containers it transports.

 

A key challenge for agv robots in hospitals is how to deal with the presence of large numbers of patients and visitors, whose behavior is difficult to predict. While AGVs have relatively little capacity for awareness and interaction, AMRs can be equipped to assess situations and react safely.     

As hospitals struggle to meet tight budgets and to deliver healthcare with stretched resources, the economic argument for AMRs grows stronger. They can significantly lower overall wage bills and at the same time free up frontline staff for more rewarding care-related tasks.

5. Hospitality Robots    

I must say that these robots are one of the most interesting developments.

Recently, hospitality businesses, including hotels, conference venues and restaurants, have been hit especially hard by Covid-related restrictions.

There are several advantages to hotel robots, they offer the possibility of not only cutting labor costs – to restore profitability – but enabling safe and socially distanced customer service.

  

There are front-of-house hotel robots, for instance, which deliver food, drinks and goods to guests in their rooms or in communal areas.

Customers are sent a PIN code, via text message, with which to open up the robot and access their orders. The same principle can be applied to waiter services and to delivering refreshments in any venue.

For hotel housekeeping, AMRs take the place of those familiar large cleaning and laundry trolleys which tend to clutter the corridors. Housekeeping AMRs shuttle through the hotel, bringing fresh supplies on demand and taking rubbish and items for laundry to central collection points, while staff carry out their room duties.   

Back-of-house robots automate the internal handling and transport of materials in any hospitality setting. Along with food and drink supplies, this may include tablecloths, cutlery and crockery, for instance.

 

 

6. Autonomous Robots in Grocery Stores

As competition intensifies, grocery stores are constantly looking for ways to make their operations more efficient. At the same time, social distancing has become an issue to factor into all public-facing business activities. Both of these drivers are increasing interest in the possibility of robotic assistance.

Grocery store AMRs are now available on the market. Although we are at quite an early stage in their development, with early models tending to focus on just one or two types of task, we should soon see an expanding choice of versatile AMR solutions. 

As always, autonomous navigation is a very useful attribute for robots working in complex and often rapidly changing spaces with close proximity to customers. AI is another important asset which promises to broaden AMRs’ roles.

One initial area of focus has been detection of spills, warning customers of these potential slipping hazards, and in some cases actually mopping them up.

  

Back-of-shop applications include finding and retrieving containers from which a staff member can pick individual items to fulfil online customer orders. This has much in common with warehouse order-picking, as discussed in section 1.

Another area being developed further is inventory-related work. There are robots which scan shelves and report issues such as items out of stock, or in the wrong location, or wrongly priced.

With knowledge of products and their locations, AMRs can direct customers to whatever they need.

One company has actually turned AMRs into shopping carts which follow a customer around the store and scan each item collected.

7. Last Mile Delivery Autonomous Robots  

The rapid growth of e-commerce and the resulting fast-delivery expectations of customers, as addressed in section 1 (Distribution centers), has created a drive for extra speed and efficiency throughout the supply chain.  

One aspect requiring particular attention is last mile delivery, which accounts for more than half of the total shipping cost. Factors like delivery complexity and traffic congestion contribute to this.

The fundamental issue, however, is that individually delivering each package is very expensive compared to bulk shipment which spreads costs across a large number of packages.

AMRs offer various approaches to making autonomous autonomouos last mile delivery  faster and more economical. If they are to provide a universal solution, it may well be one which teams up two or more robots to deliver a package. This is because, unlike the controlled environment of a distribution center, the landscape for last mile delivery is enormously variable.

Take, for example, autonomous delivery vans. Aside from the challenge of navigating intelligently and safely on public roads, they face a problem when they reach the intended address. Recipients expect parcels to be delivered through their front door, which the autonomous vehicle cannot do – especially if the addressee doesn’t live on the ground floor.

Options might include calling the recipient to come down and collect from the van.

For multi-level buildings, perhaps the future will see a dedicated internal robot delivering to each floor. In the short term, it’s likely that smaller robots – like the drones and sidewalk AMRs mentioned below – will travel on the van and complete the final part of a parcel’s journey.

In some urban or campus areas with footpaths and quiet roads, wheeled or legged delivery AMRs known as sidewalk pods can be deployed. Wheeled models have greater stability but legged AMRs cope better with more uneven surfaces. Due to their small size and low speed, they pose no safety threat.

Rough terrain is not a hindrance to autonomous drone pods, which form another category of delivery AMR. These are best suited to rural areas, as city skies present many potential obstacles and safety issues.

 

8. More rising applications of AMRs     

Some of the most intriguing uses of AMRs are the seven examples given above. Naturally, advances in technology are always expanding the range of possible uses. Just to give some examples: 
 
Specific vehicles, such as Autonomous Forklifts or Autonomous Tow tractors, which are commonly used in industrial applications, are gradually replacing laser navigation with natural navigation.

More? It goes without saying. 

An autonomous navigation system is a wonderful addition to self-driving outdoor robots.

Outdoor tow tractors, forklifts, and platforms that don't require human operators are already commonplace in logistic hubs like airports, ports, and factories.

Each and every market and industry will eventually experience the autonomous robot revolution.

Keep on learning! More related iarticles: Main warehouse Automation Trends -  Do you know what are the top 7 warehouse automation trends?     AGV Applications - Where are Automated Guided Vehicles Used? Autonomous Mobile Robots in Warehouse - AMRs bring awesome advantages to ecommerce distribution centres Hospital AGV  - AGVs bring Healthcare material handling to the next level