What Role Can Autonomous Vehicles Play in a Small Business?

Ever since Tesla (the company, not the man) demonstrated that an autonomous electrical vehicle was possible, it opened up the broader concept of autonomous transport, for all mobile platforms, not just cars. There are now autonomous designs and/or products like forklifts, cargo trucks, delivery vehicles, warehouse transporters, tool kits and so forth. The term autonomous must be used carefully though. The technology is still in its infancy and despite the initial excitement, potentially big markets, have pulled back from targeting a fully autonomous passenger car for sale to the general public. Basically, real-world testing exposed technical, regulatory, safety and economic obstacles, which made these companies rethink a full, level 4, autonomous product. Autonomous robots are still a thing, though, just rescale your thinking.

Despite the obstacles for an autonomous car, there are use cases that make sense and have relaxed the regulatory, safety and economic obstacles. Rather than attempting full autonomy, manufacturers realized that autonomy in a limited, controlled space has value for a lot of manufacturing and logistics activities. By limiting the speed and locations where these vehicles can operate, along with collision avoidance hardware and software, humans are not in harm’s way and some routine operations can be assigned to mobile robotic vehicles which are not so restrictive.

Where Autonomy makes Sense.

There are three main sectors that are finding use with a reasonable return on investment: Warehousing, Hospitals/Service and Manufacturing. Warehousing was one of the first applications of autonomous robots that used full local navigation and collision avoidance along with self-charging capabilities. Most famously Amazon led the way on this application with their Proteus system. Rather than having “people pickers” fill out customer shopping carts by running around the warehouse, the order picking process was assigned to mobile robots. Each robot brought individual items to assembly stations manned by humans that would fulfill each order. This allowed people to “build the order” while the robots rolled up and down the aisles picking product, delivering product to humans to complete each order and storing unused product back on shelves. Another dedicated logistics robot arm from Boston Dynamics uses a “smart” arm for general trailer unloading and moving of boxed product.

Hospital/Service

PuduBot/Hospi is the name of a general purpose nurses’ helper robot for delivery of medicines, meals, and supplies. The same company also makes a floor scrubber robot to help keep the environment clean. They also specialize in service robots. One advantage of hospital robots is that they can undergo high intensity UV sterilization which humans cannot. These types of robots are all commercially available and this is an area, that is actively growing, especially with the incorporation of AI.

Manufacturing

Fanuc CRX Series / UR Cobots and OTTO Motors AMR (Autonomous Mobile Robot) can handle straightforward logistics in a manufacturing environment. In a lot of ways, robots for these applications amount to a “second pair of hands”. Common tasks are pick-and-place, inspection, and machine tending – both loading and unloading. The OTTO series is a fleet of AMRs with different payloads and accessories, which allows the user to build the configuration that would be most useful in their application. OTTO is a brand of Rockwell Automation, and there are several companies that build products for these types of applications.

Mobile robots are usually treated as capital equipment and whether or not to buy any usually boils down to the Return on Investment (R0I). At the low end of pricing (an off the shelf or lightly modified unit) might cost somewhere in the range of $25K to $50K. If you have some product or an operation that requires a lot of handling or modifications and associated logistics, it might be worth the investment. If you have a machining operation that takes one person’s time, eight hours a day, every day, that would be a good candidate to replace with an autonomous operation, freeing up a person, so you can bring in more business. A typical good application would be:

• High throughput repetitive task.
• Predictable workflows so that mapping, scheduling, and charging can be optimized.
• Enough scale so that the savings in the operation justify the expense.

Most mobile robot installations don’t come with all of the components pre-installed. Usually there may be charging stations or docks; barriers and sensors. It may require you to extend the WiFi coverage to make sure that Wi-Fi is available in all parts of the plant where the mobile robot may be expected to work. There will also be a need for initial set-up, training and mapping and there will likely be a maintenance schedule and maybe even a kit of spare parts. These items can add 25% or more to the final cost of the equipment.

Making it Work

If you have a process going on that you think you might be able to replace with a mobile robot, do some homework, and make yourself knowledgeable. If you can, find a local company that has been through the process and go learn about their “before and after” experience. Then do the math for your application and if the application has a good return, then go for it.

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