Otto Motors delivers material handling robot to Toyota

Canadian robot manufacturer Otto Motors will provide one of its self-driving material handling vehicles to industrial giant Toyota for use in a Mississippi auto manufacturing plant, Otto said Tuesday.

Toyota Motor Manufacturing Mississippi Inc. will use one of the firm's Otto 1500 models to deliver car tires to an assembly line in a plant producing Corolla sedans. The Otto 1500 will sequentially load and deliver tires, then integrate with other equipment that unstacks the tires and loads them on conveyors, which carry the tires to workers on the final assembly line, Otto Motors said.

Kitchener, Ont.-based Otto Motors is the industrial robotics division of parent company Clearpath Robotics Inc., a provider of self-driving material handling equipment.

Otto Motors makes two models of its warehouse delivery bots, each named for its maximum payload in kilograms. The Otto 1500 is built to carry fully loaded pallets of goods, while its smaller sibling, the Otto 100, is designed to carry cases, totes, and "each" loads. Both vehicles use lidar sensors to scan, monitor, and interact with their environments, moving at a top speed of 4.5 mph while using software to perform obstacle avoidance, dynamic path planning, and passive suspension.

Otto Motors has also delivered one of its Otto 1500 units for use in a pilot program by General Electric Co., and expects to deliver additional units to the Toyota facility in the future, according to a statement by Simon Drexler, director of industrial solutions at OTTO Motors.