Challenge

The deviating stock levels cause companies to produce overstocks or not finish products because existing semi-finished products cannot be found. This has a negative impact on company costs and on the environment. Intelligent production with agile intralogistics requires up-to-the-minute inventory and object localisation in the centimetre range, especially in storerooms, archives and libraries with a large number of different objects.
In addition, it is necessary to efficiently guide production staff, company employees, library users and librarians to the specific objects they are looking for and to provide them with relevant information at this point or along the way, e.g. availability, related objects or works, alternative suppliers, specifications, quality data, etc.

Impact

The main objective was to provide an autonomous inventory taking platform with high localisation accuracy and effective human-robot-interaction. During the COVID pandemic outbreak, this was particularly important as many people had to stay at home. The robot still works and helps maintain material flow and production. In addition to the touch display on the robot, the focus crystallised on the use of smartphones or tablets as a user interface. This approach has the advantage that a user is not spatially bound to the location of the robot, which leads to more possibilities, e.g. a user can "call" a robot for service or send it to other people. Our approach enables as well an important human benefit, the intelligent division of labour with more satisfying work for human workers.