Photo: Port of Hamburg/Herve Boutet
GEODIS, a leading supply chain and logistics provider, and DELTA DRONE, a civilian drone services company, have developed a completely automated solution for inventory management using unmanned drones.
The new solution will allow companies to perform automatic warehouse inventories without disrupting normal operations, without needing human input or interaction.
The system combines quadcopter drones with four high-definition cameras, and a ground-based robot equipped with a battery to provide the energy needed to navigate the warehouse.
The set is equipped with indoor geo-location technology to allow easy navigation of the warehouse and is offered as a “plug and play” system that allows easy relocation to other warehouses.
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The solution can also adapt to all types of Warehouse Management Systems, allowing for great flexibility in implementation.
GEODIS and DELTA DRONES highlight the productivity advantages of their new developments – with inventory taking being a time-consuming process that can often present health and safety risks to employees – along with more reliable inventory data.
During the prototyping phase, which featured over 1,000 test flight hours (over 41 straight days), multiple tests were carried out in varied and realistic operating conditions, including low light areas and scenarios involving plastic film on pallets obscuring the image capturing sensors.
GEODIS and DELTA DRONES will now begin working on adapting the system for mass production, aiming to move to the industrial production stage by the end of the year.
