According to the data of the CMR Industry Alliance and the statistics of the New Strategic Mobile Robot Industry Research Institute, in the first half of 2023, the sales scale of unmanned forklifts in China increased by more than 80% year-on-year, making it one of the fastest growing sub-products in all categories of AGV/AMR.
Technological advancements accelerate adoption
Unmanned forklift integrates forklift technology and AGV technology, compared with ordinary AGV, in addition to completing point-to-point material handling, it can also realize the logistics and transportation tasks of multiple production links, not only good at high-level warehouse, outside the warehouse receiving area, production line transfer three scenarios, but also in heavy-load, special handling and other scenarios also have an irreplaceable role. Through the application of unmanned forklifts, it can solve the problems of large material flow and high labor intensity of manual handling in the process of industrial production and warehousing and logistics operations.
With the promotion of industrialization and industrial transformation in recent years, the landing of unmanned forklifts in various scenarios has gradually accelerated.
Chart: Sales volume and growth rate of China's forklift mobile robot market from 2018 to 2022
Chart: Sales scale and growth rate of China's forklift mobile robot market (billion yuan) from 2018 to 2022
The intelligent transformation of the industry provides a broad application soil for unmanned forklifts, and the continuous maturity of technology is the core driving force for unmanned forklifts to accelerate the landing in various scenarios. In recent years, most AGV/AMR manufacturers have taken unmanned forklifts as one of the development priorities, and the iteration speed is getting faster and faster.
Looking back at the development process of unmanned forklifts, it has roughly experienced the following stages:
Traditional forklifts to automated forklifts
In the 50s of the 20th century, the first automated guided vehicles (AGVs) began to appear. These AGVs are based on pre-set paths for material handling tasks in factories and warehouses. They are often equipped with magnetic navigation or cable guidance systems capable of following a predetermined path accurately. Early unmanned forklifts also followed this technical route, doing simple automation transformation on the basis of traditional forklifts.
From automation to intelligence
In the 90s of the 20th century, Sweden Kollmorgen NDC developed the first laser navigation AGV, by installing a laser reflector on the AGV driving path, the AGV determines its current position and direction by emitting a laser beam while collecting the laser beam reflected by the reflector, and realizes the navigation of the AGV through continuous triangular geometric operations. For a long time thereafter, unmanned forklifts basically followed this technical route, and their flexibility was greatly improved.
As laser retroreflective navigation technology continues to deepen in the field of mobile robots, natural navigation technology has begun to attract attention in the industry. After 2012, AGVs began to develop in a more autonomous direction, and on the basis of AGVs, the industry also began to propose a new concept - AMR (Automated Mobile Robot). From "automatic guidance" to "autonomous movement", the goal of natural navigation products is to scan the environment in real time and generate accurate maps through sensors without any identification, so that the vehicle can achieve true "autonomy" and have more intelligent navigation and obstacle avoidance capabilities.
Around 2016, domestic companies began to explore the application of natural navigation technology in unmanned forklifts, and some companies launched related products in succession, but the early stage was not stable, and the market acceptance was not high. In recent years, with the continuous breakthroughs of AGV/AMR manufacturers in natural navigation technology, the technology of natural navigation forklifts based on SLAM technology has further matured, and the speed of landing application has begun to accelerate.
According to the data of the CMR Industry Alliance, according to the statistics of the New Strategic Mobile Robot Industry Research Institute, in 2022, the proportion of unmanned forklifts for SLAM navigation (laser + vision) will surpass laser retroreflective forklifts for the first time, becoming the mainstream of market applications, accounting for 51%, and the growth rate of laser retroreflective unmanned forklifts is not as good as SLAM navigation products, accounting for 41.22%.
Chart: Proportion of main navigation methods of forklift mobile robots in 2022
4 major innovation directions to create a more mature and easy-to-use unmanned forklift
Since the birth of the first unmanned forklift, with the continuous development of various technologies, the function and performance of unmanned forklifts are constantly improving, but unmanned forklift manufacturers have not stopped, and continue to explore in terms of product intelligence and form structure, in order to create more mature and easy-to-use products, further replacing manual forklifts.
At present, the exploration of unmanned forklift manufacturers in terms of technology mainly includes the following aspects:
More flexible navigation
Navigation technology has always been the focus of breakthroughs in unmanned forklifts. In the future, full-life cycle SLAM, dynamic target filtering, multi-sensor fusion, semantic segmentation and recognition are the main paths for unmanned forklifts to further improve their navigation capabilities. Especially in the process of unmanned forklifts gradually going outdoors, the application of 3D navigation technology will continue to increase.
The application of 3D sensors is conducive to the robot automatically establishing a more detailed environmental model, the system deployment is also simpler, even in the case of scarce environmental features, it can provide richer environmental information, conducive to stable navigation, in a highly dynamic environment robustness than 2D laser navigation, while the requirements for ground flatness are reduced, so as to achieve more efficient and safe handling tasks.
The application of 3D navigation in the field of mobile robots starts from unmanned forklifts, and at present, some companies have successively launched 3D SLAM unmanned forklifts and have successfully applied them.
LeiShen Intelligence-3D SLAM lightweight unmanned forklift LXST15-D
The LXST15-D lightweight unmanned forklift LXST15-D is equipped with lidar independently developed by Leishen Intelligent on the top, middle, bottom and fork tip of the body, which realizes all-round stereoscopic perception and 360° safety protection in the process of unmanned handling. It is suitable for lightweight handling scenarios, realizing simple point-to-point cycle handling, and can be used out of the box.
- 3D stereoscopic protection: all-round surround stereoscopic perception, unmanned forklift operation safety and guarantee;
- All-round environmental perception: Equipped with multiple 3D multi-line lidar with superior performance, it provides stable and rich 3D environmental information for unmanned forklifts and realizes all-round super perception capabilities;
- Easy deployment and double efficiency: no need to deploy auxiliary facilities in the environment, short service cycle; At the same time, it supports 7*24h unmanned operation, supports intelligent multi-machine scheduling, and greatly improves work efficiency.
- Strong environmental adaptability: suitable for various indoor and outdoor cross-scenarios, accurately identify pallets and navigation obstacle avoidance day and night, and achieve trouble-free operation in all days and all scenarios;
- Strong comprehensive cost control: high stability, high reliability, high maintainability and high security, and the comprehensive cost advantage is leading in the world;
- Flexible circulation mode: the circulation mode of bus and taxi can be switched at will, and the operation is simple and flexible, which meets all the plane handling needs between the point and the library; Bus circulation mode: stop at the station, pick up and deliver, and circulate distribution; Taxi circulation mode: on-demand stop, pick-up and delivery, circular distribution;
- Supporting management software: the standard API interface can be compatible with a variety of system software, and also supports supporting WMS, WCS, FMS, intelligent storage location monitoring systems to assist in the management of unmanned operations;
, for a long time
Summary: From the current market situation, the application of unmanned forklifts has not yet fully started, and there is still a long way to go to replace traditional forklifts. There are many factors restricting its large-scale application, but the core is that compared with manual forklifts, in many scenarios, from the perspective of efficiency, unmanned forklifts cannot completely replace manual forklifts. Looking at the current innovation direction of unmanned forklift manufacturers, whether it is more flexible navigation, the exploration of new forms or the development of miniaturized, standardized and modular products, its foothold is how to further improve the application efficiency of unmanned forklifts, and effectively help end customers achieve cost reduction and efficiency increase, which is the key to the breakthrough of unmanned forklifts to large-scale applications, and it is also the direction that all unmanned forklift manufacturers should strive for in the future.