After the ONE and the OCF, now comes the ODM. AGILOX North America, a leading manufacturer of automated material handling solutions, is adding an autonomous dolly mover to its range of intelligent transport systems controlled by its proprietary X-Swarm intelligence. AGILOX is thus targeting an entirely new area of applications: the transport of small load carriers.
AGILOX is expanding its Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) range with the new Omnidirectional Dolly Mover AGILOX ODM. It can accept loads with a maximum weight of 300 kg / 661 lbs. to a maximum lifting height of 250 mm / 10 inches and transport them to their destination. The intelligent AMR concept based on the proven AGILOX X-SWARM technology thus opens up new areas of applications and other industry segments where small load carriers (such as totes), which the new AGILOX ODM is designed to transport, are widely used, especially in the electronics and pharmaceutical industries.
Details of the new AGILOX ODM
The AGILOX ODM is a true autonomous mobile robot: The compact vehicle travels autonomously and navigates freely on the production floor or in the warehouse, perfectly ensuring the in-house material flow. Like the AGILOX ONE and the AGILOX OCF, the AGILOX ODM uses an omnidirectional drive concept. This allows it to travel transversely into rack aisles and turn on the spot, enabling it to maneuver even in the tightest spaces. The lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4) accumulator ensures short charge times and long operating cycles.
“AGILOX is a company that has built a strong foundation with the AGILOX ONE and the AGILOX OCF. With the new AGILOX ODM, we remain true to our brand DNA while simultaneously targeting the transport of small load carriers to support our growth plan to become the world's leading AMR provider,” says Andreas Boedenauer, CEO of AGILOX North America.
The AGILOX advantage
With the new AGILOX ODM, customers benefit from the advantages of the proven X-SWARM technology that already powers the AGILOX ONE and the AGILOX OCF: the unique advantages of an (intra-)logistics solution designed from the ground up.
Since AGILOX AMRs have no central fleet management system and can navigate in the existing warehouse and production facility environment with millimeter precision, there is no need for time-consuming and costly modifications to the existing infrastructure. Autonomous route-finding also enables the vehicles to avoid obstacles unaided. If it is impossible to get past a detected obstacle due to its size or the available clearance, the AMRs calculate a new route within seconds to reach their destination as quickly as possible. This gives customers maximum freedom in their existing processes, as the system adapts to the customer's processes and not the other way around. Furthermore, fully autonomous routing ensures a safe workflow – even in mixed operations.
Plug & Perform commissioning means that, once the AMRs have been put into operation, they organize themselves according to the decentralized architecture of swarm intelligence, i.e., they exchange information several times a second to enable the entire fleet to find the most efficient routes and prevent potential deadlocks before they even occur. The customer thus benefits from a system that constantly runs smoothly, with no downtime. Time-consuming coordination of vehicles by customers is also a thing of the past, thanks to AGILOX X-SWARM technology. This dramatically improves flexibility, letting the user expand the vehicle's area of operation within just a few minutes. It also means that it is very easy to move an AGILOX AMR to be used temporarily in other areas of the facility or even in subsidiaries. Since AGILOX vehicles can also communicate with other technologies installed in the building infrastructure using IO boxes, even rolling doors or multiple floors are no problem for the AMRs. Customers enjoy maximum flexibility in the organization of their production processes.
Another significant advantage comes from the combined operation of the various AGILOX AMRs in a swarm. For example, the smaller AGILOX ONE and ODM series vehicles feed the assembly workstations or e-Kanban racks, while the AGILOX OCF vehicles transport the pallets. All vehicles use the same control and WiFi infrastructure.
Customers will get a chance to see the AGILOX ONE together with its bigger siblings ONE and OCF in March 2023 at the PROMAT show in Chicago (Booth# N7316).
https://www.agilox.net/en/product/agilox-odm/
