For each ProMat and MODEX show, show producer MHI runs an innovation award program, with various vendors entering submissions in one of three categories:
• Best New Product
• Best Innovation of an Existing Product
• Best IT [software] Innovation
The same process is underway for the virtual ProMat DX 2021 event. This week, MHI announced the 10 finalist for each category.
This week, we summarize the list of finalist for Best New Materials Handling products. Keep in mind the various descriptions that were submitted to MHI come from the vendors themselves, not MHI, and are commercial in nature.
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The criteria for selecting the finalists were concept, value, and impact.
The winners of the 2021 MHI Innovation Awards will be announced during a ProMatDX keynote session at 11:00 AM CT on April 12 at promatshow.com
AutoStore for Router
Launched September 2020, Router is a software suite for the AutoStore cube-based order fulfillment system that increases robot productivity and efficiency by up to 40%. Based on over 20 years of research and development, this new software is a disruptive technology that can be implemented in any AutoStore system, whether a large-scale distribution center or a back-of-store micro-fulfillment center. Highly efficient with increased flexibility, Router improves total system throughput by up to 4x, meeting today's customers' rapidly changing needs.
Big Ass Fan for Clean Air System
Whether it's large distribution centers, small manufacturing plants, or a variety of commercial spaces, wherever people are gathered, you'll find harmful pathogens that can cause diseases like COVID-19 and influenza. Big Ass Fans® Clean Air System is designed to destroy those pathogens, providing safer, cleaner air that everyone can enjoy.
Fives Intralogistics Corp. for GENI-Flex Modular Solution
From the company that invented the cross-belt sorter, held early patents for the linear shoe sorter, and has mastered the art of high-speed automatic parcel singulation over the last 2 decades, comes the latest innovation in material handling technology. Fives Intralogistics introduces the GENI-Flex™ Modular Solution, a response to the growing demand for automated material handling for all four corners of the items-to-be-handled spectrum, in this case the heavy, lengthy, or irregularly shaped. Fives' GENI-Flex™ Modular Solution is the only automated sortation system that sorts oversized and irregularly shaped products up to 175 lbs. in weight, 9 ft. in length, and with multiple, discontinuous contact points. Oversized and irregular packages must typically be sorted manually, which is inefficient, physically demanding, and potentially harmful to workers' health and safety. The GENI-Flex™ Modular Solution alleviates these conditions, and in doing so provides substantial operational and health-related cost benefits.
Geek+ for Geek+ RoboShuttle C200M Robot
Geek+ RoboShuttle C200M is the world's first extended-depth bin-to-person robot, the AMR solution with the most robust single-layer storage capability to date. The C200M operates on narrow aisles, and its extended arms reach new storage depth, saving up to 50% of warehouse space and significantly reducing warehouse rental costs. The robot also reaches new heights, covering storage from 0.215 meters to up to 5 meters and the storage capacity of the warehouse increases by 3 times that of a manual warehouse. With warehouse real estate costs on the rise everywhere, accounting for over 40% of overall operating expenses, the C200M can effectively ease cost pressures by compressing the warehouse area and improving storage efficiency. Additionally, the robot uses the Geek+ intelligent system, with AI algorithms covering order analysis and robot scheduling to make entire warehouse operations more flexible, scalable, and efficient.
SVT Robotics for SOFTBOT Platform
In 2020, SVT Robotics launched the SOFTBOT Platform, an agnostic integration software technology that enables companies to rapidly integrate and deploy industrial robotics to their warehouse or manufacturing facility in just hours or days, rather than months or years. Through the SOFTBOT Platform, businesses integrate and connect any enterprise system to any robot or automation for any task at revolutionary speed and without the need for custom code, reducing risk and cost. How does it work? Our platform utilizes pre-built integrations – “SOFTBOT Connectors” – for each robotic or automation technology. By integrating enterprise systems and automation, SOFTBOTs eliminate the need for inflexible custom code and the long, expensive development cycles that come with it.
SIERA.AI for SIERA Forklift Safety System S3
The new way SIERA.AI delivers forklift safety is by integrating technologies like machine vision, IoT sensors and AI to prevent accidents before they happen. The SIERA Forklift Safety System S3 Slow to a Safe Stop and S3 with Proximity Monitoring & Impact Tracking are such safety solutions. The S3 with Slow to a Safe Stop for electric forklifts constantly monitors the area. If a pedestrian or object falls within its path, the forklift will slow down then come to controlled stop. How? The customer decides when you want the S3 to begin warning with audible and visual alerts, 6”, 12” 20 1/3”. When the pedestrian or object gets too close, and the operator is unaware of the pedestrian or object, the S3 will automatically override the driver, slow down and come to a safe stop. The S3 with Proximity Monitoring & Impact Tracking constantly monitors proximity around a gas, electric or LP lift truck.
(See More Below)
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CATEGORY SPONSOR: SOFTEON |
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 ThruWave, Inc. for ThruWave X2 mmWave Imaging System
ThruWave's innovative 3D millimeter wave imaging technology provides manufacturing and supply chain operators with transformative automated inspection capabilities, enabling process improvements across their operations. Unlike camera-based inspection systems that see only the surface of objects, ThruWave's groundbreaking mmWave sensors see through opaque packaging like corrugated boxes and plastic totes to automatically dimension items, count items, and detect anomalies, all without opening sealed packaging.
ThruWave's high throughput sensors and software automatically scans items at conveyor speeds up to 600 ft/min. ThruWave's innovative automated inspection systems enable process improvements that reduce cost and increase customer satisfaction, while increasing revenue generation capacity from existing facilities. ThruWave's sensor and software innovations enable a wide range of process improvements. For example, a typical e-commerce package may contain up to 40% void space, leading to at least 15% excess corrugated usage, 60% excess filler material usage, and up to 20% excess transportation cost. ThruWave's 3D millimeter wave imaging technology enables customers to dynamically measure their cube utilization and adapt to an ever-changing product mix, enabling cost savings and increasing customer satisfaction through reduced packaging material usage.
Vecna Robotics for Autonomous Counterbalanced Fork Truck
The Autonomous Counterbalanced Fork Truck is a highly versatile, safe, intelligent and integrated pallet-handling solution. This next-generation AMR offers vertical lift of up to 72”to move a wider range of payloads and pallet types, lift inventory to and from equipment, and seamlessly work alongside other materials handling vehicles and human workers improving productivity in dynamic industrial environments. The Autonomous Fork Truck delivers powerful and flexible applications that streamline materials handling and logistics operations.
These applications include: • Flexible pallet handling to support pallets of varying sizes and weights including empty, partial, full, irregular, and double-stacked, with and without bottom boards. • Warehouse material hauling to move pallets floor-to-floor and delivering pallets to staging locations within aisles using dynamic obstacle avoidance to navigate warehouses easily and safely. • Induction, extraction, and sortation to hand off pallets to and from material handling equipment like conveyors, carts and wrappers. • Opportunistic Material Handling to transport empty pallets, dunnage, or trash on an as needed basis. The new solution also leverages Vecna Robotics' orchestration engine Pivota, which analyzes an organization's operations and adjusts processes, accordingly, ensuring every facet performs optimally in real-time.
Waypoint Robotics, Inc. for Waypoint Robotics/Productive Robotics 7 DOF Omnidirectional Mobile Manipulator
Waypoint Robotics has teamed with Productive Robotics to finally make mobile manipulation accessible for workers on the job today. Combine the easiest to use and most capable omnidirectional AMR on the market with the easiest to use 7 axis cobot arm, and it has never been easier or more cost effective to deploy a mobile manipulator for manufacturing and logistics applications. Workers can employ this mobile platform to perform repetitive tasks such as machine tending, quality assurance sampling, material replenishment, and many others, so they can focus on the high skilled jobs for which they are uniquely qualified. What makes it so easy? Waypoint Robotics' Vector AMR and Product Robotics' OB7 have been elegantly integrated so set up and operation is fast and intuitive with both machines seamlessly working together as they perform tasks.
Wiferion GmbH for etaLINK 3000 - wireless charging system
AGVs, AMRs, and industrial trucks can now be charged without any contact quickly and safely. As a leading provider of mobile, wireless power supply for industrial e-vehicles in Europe, Wiferion is revolutionizing the automated charging of AGVs and AMR with etaLINK. The etaLINK 3000 inductive fast-charging system is the world's first production-ready, contactless battery charging system with an efficiency of 93% in its class. With the flexible and scalable technology, vehicles are fully charged automatically during the shortest stops; also known as in-process-charging. No longer will AGVs and AMRs be tethered to plugged-in wires for long unproductive charging pauses. This innovation translates to productivity increases up to 30%. Maintenance-free, automated charging is no longer futuristic; efficient automated charging processes are available today.
Next week, SCDigest will summarize the finalists for Best Innovation of an Existing Product.
Any reaction to this list of finalists ? Let us know your thoughts at the Feedback section below.
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