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As technology continues to advance rapidly through the 21st Century, the use of unmanned vehicles for business operations has led to the increasing popularity of Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMR) across many industries.
This is because the AMR fleet is able to identify, grab and move heavy objects from one location to another while avoiding obstacles in their path, thus eliminating the need for the manual moving of stocks or goods. Businesses can even use multiple robots and plan their path accordingly to ensure that they will not cross paths or collide at any point of each task.
While cost might be a valid concern for most businesses looking to implement AMR fleets in their business facility, efficient fleet management software and path-planning tools can increase productivity and output to facilitate expansion in the long term.
Reimagining the Use of AMRs
As more businesses implement the use of AMRs in daily business operations, we will start to see new ways to apply the many functionalities of these automated robots. While AMRs are most commonly used for goods and materials handling, they can serve you beyond transporting parts and finished goods. With built-in conveyors and attachments that can be connected to the robot, you can use AMRs to load and unload palletized goods or interface with the conveyor system without human intervention.
As for the healthcare industry, hygiene is of utmost importance, as most medical facilities will have to be sterile. AMRs can help to sanitise and disinfect large areas of a facility efficiently using virus-killing UV lights or decontamination sprays. Using the AMR to disinfect a facility can avoid exposure to the harmful UV light itself and viruses or potential infection during the process of decontamination.
In the Biotech industry, companies often need to comply with strongly regulated production processes, which can mean more labour-intensive tasks such as monitoring and regular waste removal from production lines. These tasks can be left to the AMRs while employees can focus on critical steps of the biopharmaceutical manufacturing process such as testing.
As autonomous navigation advances, AMR will get even smarter and more efficient. Coupling with artificial intelligent (A.I.) monitoring technologies, more comprehensive end to end solutions can be available. For example, AMR fleet management that can receive real time materials tracking and conditions of staging areas will handle planned inter-logistic tasks without human intervention. Real time material tracking can also be done via A.I. based video analytics.
The data generated by these robots can also be harvested and used to improve workplace productivity and monitor performance, allowing for constant technical improvements in the long run. Users tasked to monitor and manage AMRs will also gain access to predictions and information about each robot to anticipate the replacement of components ahead of time or receive recommendations to improve specific robots’ deployments.
Interested in experiencing the full potential of AMRs in the workplace? Get in touch with our product experts and find out how our Autonomous Material Handling (AMH) and robotics solutions can help to automate your work processes today.