At first glance, high-capacity Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) and Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) perform similar tasks. That is, they are capable of moving pallets and heavy payloads long distances. However, a robot is only as good as the efficiency gains it provides your organization. It turns out that it’s not what the robot does that matters, but how. Since navigation is the biggest factor affecting your solutions’ efficiency, we will take a closer look at what goes into efficient navigation.
First, let’s define our terms. Navigation is the ability to get to the right destination (or destinations) at the right time. Think about your last trip to your favorite home improvement store. You use navigation to get from the front door to the plumbing department and back to check out.
The three distinguishing navigation features that help achieve greater efficiencies are: obstacle avoidance, localization, and pallet handling. A combination of these features makes the AMR smarter, more flexible, and more efficient than traditional AGVs, and free workers to do their jobs without distraction.
Obstacle Avoidance
Obstacle avoidance is term that refers to the ability for a robot to navigate freely in dynamic environments and tight spaces.
Path Following and Path Planning
To understand obstacle avoidance, we’ll first take a look at the differences between path following and path planning. Path Following is the way most traditional and advanced AGVs navigate. It works by setting a specific, predefined route throughout a facility. Then, the AGV follows that path as accurately as possible. There are several drawbacks to Path Following. For one, obstacles in the path of a stopped AGV must be manually cleared, causing frequent interruptions to workers. By comparison, an AMR will independently navigate around the obstacle and continue on its way.
Passing Moving Vehicles
Some advanced AGVs will navigate around an obstacle, which works well for an isolated obstacle in an aisle. However, when traveling in high traffic areas, AMRs travel smarter. Imagine you’re on a two-lane highway and there’s a truck moving slowly ahead of you. You can pull into the passing lane to pull ahead. It’s not until you get into the passing lane that you see there are 2 more vehicles in the travel lane up ahead. They key difference lies in how and when a self-driving forklift pulls back into the travel lane. An advanced AGV will get in front of the truck it just passed, just to realize that there is another vehicle in front of it, causing it to have to start the process all over again. An AMR, however, will intelligently decide whether to stay in the passing lane or to merge back into the travel lane based on what it can see rather than blindly returning to the path.
Congestion
Another key difference in the way AMRs and AGVs handle obstacles is that obstacles near the path will often cause an AGV to stop.
Let’s say the area was clear when the AGV was installed, but the team later decided to store pallets right along the side of the path. This will cause the AGV to do one of two things – the first more benign than the second. The AGV will either slow down to a crawl while passing the obstacles, or drive by the obstacle at a high speed, without leaving room for a person to egress. The first scenario kills time. The second scenario is a major safety concern. By comparison, because an AMR is a path planning robot, it does not need to adhere to a fixed route and uses that ability to provide more space to obstacles near the path, with ample room for people to safely move about.
In addition, should an AMR run into a heavily congested area, it can navigate through tight spaces and make its way to the other side. What’s more, an AMR can sense dynamic obstacles, predict their future motions, and slow down to give way if needed.
Additionally, in most dynamic warehouse environments, goods are moving quickly, and workflow or floor plans change frequently. A path following AGV is not robust to these changes. A site manager must manually re-route the AGV to teach it a new route. These manual interventions are cumbersome and consume workers’ time.
Localization
Localization is the robot’s ability to know where it is in space, usually based on landmarks. Traditional AGVs, Advanced AGVs, and AMRs all localize in different ways, resulting in different levels of efficiency.
Natural Feature Localization
Traditional AGVs require reflectors or mirrors for localization, meaning additional infrastructure is required to install these self-driving forklifts. Advanced AGVs use what’s referred to as natural features for localization. Natural features are static things in the environment, like racking, walls, or pillars. With either Traditional AGVs or Advanced AGVs, both methods require the landmark to be visible and exactly the same. The reason is because AGVs need to know precisely where they are so they know they’re precisely on the right. If it cannot localize, the robot will stop and require manual intervention to get it started again. Once an AGV leaves its path, it has no way to get back on route.
Natural Feature Localization paired with Obstacle Avoidance
AMRs use natural feature localization, as well, but when paired with path planning as described above, they are much more robust to changes in their environment. When an AMR strays from the desired path, it is confident that it can use path planning and obstacle avoidance to move safely forward, avoid people and obstacles and get back on path. This approach saves not only travel time, but also the time that workers are required to help a lost AGV find its way.
The way Vecna Robotics has developed its localization is based on something similar to how a human localizes. The AMR just need to make progress down the aisle, but it doesn’t have to know precise measurements. Think about it. If you’re moving from you living room to the kitchen to get a glass of water, you don’t need to know in fractions of an inch how far you have to walk. All you need to know is roughly how to get there. Thus, the AMR moves from one area to another in a more natural way without requiring precise localization all the time.
Now, when you arrive in the kitchen, you do need to precisely where the glass of water is in order to pick it up and lift it to your lips. Similarly, when an AMR is ready to dock to a pallet or conveyor, it localizes more precisely.
The benefits to this method are that AMRs are more flexible to changes in their environment. An AGV is going to expect that a warehouse is always exactly the same as it was when it was first mapped. Because the environment is constantly in flux, performance over time will gradually become worse and worse. An AMR that relies on a combination of smart localization and obstacle avoidance will never degrade in performance – and in fact, has the potential to improve over time.
Pallet Handling
High-capacity AMRs and AGVs have one primary goal: move pallets efficiently. However, AMRs and AGVs are not created equally when it comes to pallet handling. This is a key area to understand when selecting a solution to maximize efficiency. Let’s get into it.
Independent Pallet Pick Up
One important distinction is how self-driving forklifts approach pallet pickup. Most traditional AGVs are unable to pick up pallets and require a human to manually load the pallet onto forks. Advanced AGVs are more independent and many can pick up pallets without manual intervention. However, AMRs are the most independent and consistently successful in this area. Needless to say, independent pallet pick up is critical to overall efficiency, so workers don’t have to stop what they’re doing and assist the AGV.
Pallet Detection
The other major factor that contributes to pallet handling efficiency is pallet detection. AGVs are designed to navigate to a location where they think their target pallet should be. If the pallet is placed askew, or if the pallet is not in that exact location, the AGV will still attempt the pick until it realizes nothing has been loaded onto its forks. It will then wait for help from a human worker. We all know that a warehouse environment is far from precise and perfect where goods and people are moving at lightning speed.
While AGVs use localization to find pallets, AMRs make use detection – that is, positive confirmation via onboard sensors - to determine if the pallet is there before they attempt the pickup. AMRs will travel to the area that they believe the pallet should be and look around for the right label just as a human would scan supermarket shelves for their favorite brand of soda. If the pallet is askew, or slightly out of the drop zone, the robot will be able to identify it, just as a person can see that a case of soda is at an angle on the supermarket shelf. If the right pallet is not where the AMR anticipated it should be, it will move to the next drop area and search again. This approach unlocks a massive amount of efficiency gains as it allows operators to work more quickly with less specificity around how and where they drop off pallets.
Using AMRs to Maximize Operator Efficiency
When comparing AMRs and AGVs, it’s important to take navigation into account. The gains created by path planning, obstacle avoidance, and pallet handling give AMRs the upper hand when it comes to efficiency and flexibility. Perhaps more importantly, AMRs allow operators the freedom to work without interruption with fewer stops and calls for local assistance, and the ability to forgive some imperfect pallet placement in pick and drop zones. AMRs are the key to maximizing operator efficiency.
It’s almost Halloween, and if your town is anything like mine, your neighbors’ yards are already littered with ghosts, witches and tombstones.
Clearly some of us enjoy giving other people a scare. Just as clearly, some of us enjoy getting a scare.
I’m not one of them. I hate haunted houses. I avoid scary movies like the plague. And I once jumped on top of several eight-year-old members of the Girl Scout troop that I was leading in order to escape a haunted hayride’s zombie.
However, that doesn’t mean I’m not capable of (wo)manning up and facing my fears, especially it’s for a good cause, which is why ALAN’s executive director, Kathy Fulton and I recently put our heads together to create this short list of some of the scariest perceptions that people have about disasters and disaster relief.
Scary Perception Number One: “A Disaster Will Never Happen To Me.”
When people live in certain areas (i.e. far away from a hurricane-prone coast or earthquake fault lines) it’s easy for them to assume that they’re protected from many types of catastrophes – and to become dangerously casual about making disaster preparations or heeding safety warnings.
Frankly, this attitude scares the heck out of us, because if the last few years have taught us anything, it’s that disasters can take a wide variety of forms and strike at almost any time. And the people who fail to plan – or to take shelter/evacuate as requested – are much more likely to find themselves in harm’s way.
Scary Perception Number Two: “It’s Okay. The Government’s Got It Covered.”
There are so many things wrong with this second perception that it’s not even funny. For one thing, not every disaster survivor qualifies for FEMA government assistance. For another, some survivors aren’t eligible for as much government assistance as others. Plus it can take some time for FEMA to process all of the requests for assistance that it receives and to conduct all of the necessary inspections that need to be made before it can provide funds. And even then, these funds are limited.
It’s a similar story for disaster survivors who are fortunate enough to have homeowners’ or renters’ insurance.
That’s why the humanitarian response organizations that provide food, hydration, shelter and other supplies immediately after a disaster hits (and the non-profit organizations that help survivors fill in the short-term and long-term gaps that government assistance and insurance reimbursement don’t cover) are so essential. It’s also why the people who support them are an answer to prayer.
Scary Perception Three: “We’re Too Far Away To Be Of Help.”
One of the laments that we often hear from potential transportation, warehousing and material handling equipment donors is, “We’d have loved to help you with relief efforts for X community’s disaster. But we didn’t have any locations in the area.”
The sad thing is, we probably could have used their help – and so could many of the humanitarian organizations that we support.
When push comes to shove, these organizations can’t afford to split hairs about where their donated relief supplies come from, especially if those supplies extend or enable their relief efforts. They might even NEED those donations to come from another part of the country because many of their closer potential product donors may have already been tapped out.
In light of this, never underestimate the value of a long-distance contributed logistics offer. Relief supplies are often located much farther away from a disaster site than you might imagine. And the help that you’re offering might be just the ticket.
Scary Perception Four: “It’s Been A Few Months (Or Years). So Survivors Of That Particular Disaster Don’t Need Our Help Anymore.”
If individuals and communities recovered from disasters as quickly as their particular disasters stopped making headlines, life would be much easier for everyone. However as any disaster survivor can tell you, that’s rarely the case.
Disaster recovery is a super-long process that’s usually measured in months or years rather than days or weeks. And many of its costliest and most work-intensive stages like clean-up and rebuilding don’t start until long after the news and camera crews have left.
So don’t ever think that there’s no way you can help a community just because the disaster that affected it happened quite a while ago. Chances are, that’s when your compassion and assistance will be needed the most.
Scary Perception Five: “Helping With Disaster Relief Won’t Pay The Bills. As A Result, There’s Nothing To Be Gained From Our Business Making A Financial Or In-Kind Donation.”
While it may not initially seem like you have anything financial to gain from helping a community in need, nothing could be further from the truth, especially if that community is home to some of your employees, customers, suppliers or business operations.
The people who live in these communities can (and do) remember who showed up for them when times were tough – and so do many other members of the purchasing public. In fact, according to recent article in the MIT/Sloane Management Review, multiple studies have shown that corporate donations ultimately attract customers. And according to another recent article in the Harvard Business Review, consumers tend to favor companies that donate a larger share of their profits.
Is this why so many of our country’s most successful organizations are also some of the most philanthropic? Possibly. However, if that’s the case, it’s okay by us, because when generous businesses do what they can to help a community get back on its feet more quickly, everybody wins.
Fear Not
There’s far more I could add to this story. But time and Halloween-candy buying obligations don’t allow me to discuss them all. Besides, I want to end this story on a caring rather than a scaring note.
So I’ll leave you with this: Even though disasters seem to happen with frightening regularity, I’ve actually become a far braver person since joining the ALAN family several years ago. It’s taught me that when horrible things like hurricanes, tornadoes and pandemics happen, a lot of wonderful people show up to help – and reminded me that when things are at their most harrowing, there are always extraordinary people like you ready to come to the rescue.
Just don’t ask me to go on a spooky hayride anytime soon.
"Spot solutions are needed to help a company get through a sudden shock, but the only way to ensure agility and resilience going forward is by addressing systemic issues in a way that is intentional and focused on the long term and brings together clear priorities, well-designed repeatable processes, robust governance, and a skilled team." - Harvard Business Review
An article published by McKinsey & Co. in August observed, “over the past year, many companies have made structural changes to their supply networks by implementing dual or multiple sourcing strategies for critical materials and moving from global to regional networks.”
This structural change pivots on the difference between low cost and best cost. The shift extends through Tier 1 Suppliers through lower tiers. The intent of a low-cost supply chain strategy is to present a low price to customers. A best-cost strategy adds factors beyond cost to the equation, like risk, lead time, and responsiveness.
The McKinsey article continues, “Ninety-seven percent of respondents [to the survey] say they have applied some combination of inventory increases, dual sourcing, and regionalization to boost resilience.”
We offshored, losing sight of the associated risk, for decades. Time to learn what near-shore, re-shore, regionalization, and localization mean.
As global supply chains become increasingly complicated, there are now more digital connections and business collaborations in the global shipping industry than ever before. Holding freight data in opaque, disconnected silos and relying on outdated methods of communication is not just inefficient - it’s unsustainable.
The global supply chain is no longer a linear process. Whereas before it was simply about moving freight from point A to B, now there is now a multitude of options for transporting that freight, each with its own unique set of capabilities and constraints.
So, what do shippers really want from their logistics service providers? Two things: accurate information at their fingertips and the ability to conduct business and transact - without having to pick up a phone or wait for email replies. Digital customer-facing freight execution platforms are the answer, collecting the most relevant and up-to-date data from carriers on one side, and providing shippers with a simplified and accelerated process on the other.
Digital freight execution platforms also provide shippers with a unified view of their shipping options, giving them the data they need at a glance to make an informed decision for any particular shipment.
Plus, as we continue to navigate uncertain waters, shippers are increasingly seeking solutions to increase resilience. After all, if there’s anything the last few years have taught us, it’s to expect the unexpected. The organizations that were able to pivot fastest came out on top. The availability of accurate data and solutions to action that data are key building blocks to resiliency in the face of new and unexpected challenges. Supply chain optimization, especially today, hinges on accessible, up-to-the-minute data, shared and acted on to keep freight moving as successfully as possible.
Digital Freight Execution Puts Power in Shippers’ Hands
Increasingly, freight forwarders and logistics providers are giving their shipper customers access to online freight execution platforms for just this purpose.
Largely unheard of just a few short years ago, online freight execution tools for shippers have quickly emerged to become a must-have for established forwarders to compete with startup digital forwarders. Logistics providers can no longer afford to go without offering this critical customer tool which enables shippers to access crucial freight data online, including timely visibility of their freight on the move. Their shipper customers have come to expect it, and it’s what’s needed to compete in today’s market.
Traditional methods of communication between shippers and freight forwarders can be slow and inefficient. Email and phone tag are not conducive to fast decision-making, and sales representatives may not always have the most accurate information about fleets, equipment, and routes. Digital freight execution platforms enable shippers and carriers to communicate in real-time, facilitating fast decision-making while eliminating the potential for miscommunication.
As digital conveniences proliferate our day-to-day lives (think of ordering food online, tracking your latest purchase, viewing your favorite shows on-demand, and so much more), it only makes sense that we should expect similar experiences in our work lives. That means that the traditional way of working in the freight industry, fraught with manual processes, phone calls, and emails, simply doesn’t cut it in today’s digital-first world.
What’s more, with timely freight data, shippers are better equipped to quickly address exceptions by changing transportation plans. Supply chain disconnections are costly. Responding to exceptions is critical to a smooth-running supply chain where shipments arrive at their final destination as planned.
“An organization's ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage,” Jack Welch
One of the outstanding things about a digital freight platform is the ability to integrate various functional modules to enable shipment data to be used and shared. These may include tracking and visibility, warehouse inventory, ocean shipments, freight rates, and even finance information, enabling a shipper to pay invoices online. Customer-facing online portals are an important and effective way to facilitate a shippers’ access to key shipment information, improving visibility and productivity on all fronts.
Partnering for Sustainable Success
Partner programs are another important aspect of connected digital freight platforms. This openness to integrate with a broad range of shipping industry businesses, such as technology or service providers, offers shippers the ability to access their partners through their forwarders’ customer-facing freight execution portal. This enables the shipper to have a comprehensive and complete flow of key freight data based on their unique needs and partners.
For example, if a shipper is using a real-time transportation visibility (RTTV) system provider, they can work with their forwarder to integrate the RTTV solution with the forwarder’s digital platform. This is only possible when the forwarder has a partner program enabling integrations.
All parties involved with a shipment can boost productivity and enhance value for the customer when they’re digitally integrated with freight transaction operational areas and partner providers. Technology companies who try to wall off access to the data they manage for their customers and their functionality have it backwards: they might create an appearance of their own business interests being protected in the short term, but long term, they’re either going to hurt their customers, or, more likely, their own product development roadmap.
Recent supply chain challenges have pushed BCO shippers and their logistics partners to take a much closer look at cargo flows. Accessible, convenient, and transparent freight data is now the expectation and necessary to control costs and keep cargo in view for optimal supply chain management.
Digital freight execution is the wave of the future, and it's already making a big impact in the shipping industry. Streamlining data flows by building out connectivity helps to bring greater logistics harmony that allows shippers to optimize their overall freight ecosystem.
America’s posture in world trade, and the underlying supply chains, are more than robust. According to the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, the United States balance of trade in goods and services deficit dropped to $70.6 billion in July. Exports hit the highest level in real dollars since tracking began over 70 years ago. During the recovery from Covid,, with reshoring and shifting market demands, are holding imports flat..
This success is happening despite the global disruption caused by Ukraine. Expect our labor shortages to continue. Expect wage pressure to continue. Expect inflationary pressures across the supply chain to continue.