46 While it is tempting to attribute the rising use of UGVs in warehouse operations (or AMRs – autonomous mobile robots, as they are often called in that context) entirely to labour shortages, it is important to remember that autonomy stands to greatly enhance the safety, efficiency and throughput of warehouses, and so enable all-around better deployment and care of human assets across logistics chains. Robotics company Addverb understands this, having developed and produced a range of automated robotic systems for warehouses and other intralogistics operations. In addition to its in-house hardware manufacturing and software programming capabilities, it regularly consults with logistics firms about the contexts and use cases for tailoring its AMRs and stationary robots, much as in the UAV world these days. This has led to Addverb designing and manufacturing numerous automated rail-based vehicles, autonomous ground marker-guided vehicles and other technologies, such as speech recognition for streamlining logistics operations. More recently, it has launched its Dynamo family of fully autonomousmaterials transportation robots. Previously, there were only three vehicles in this series – the Dynamo 100, 200 and500, so-called for their respective payload capacities in kilos. Addverb has now expanded the series by unveiling one of its largest robots yet, the Dynamo 1000 (also called the Dynamo 1T), which with its 250 kg empty weight and 1000 kg carrying capacity gives it the biggest payload-to-empty weight ratio of any vehicle we have yet covered. Also, it measures 1550 x 950 x 281 mm, operates for 4 hours between battery recharges, andmoves at up to 2m/s. Addverb and Dynamo background Headquartered in Uttar Pradesh, India (with offices across Asia, Europe and the US), Addverb was founded by a team that for the most part had previously hailed fromAsian Paints, a paint and coating products manufacturer (also in India) that was among the country’s early adopters of warehouse automation solutions. There, Addverb’s would-be founders carried out research across the automation industry to learn about the kinds of solutions that were available, and found that most of themwere manufactured in either the US or Europe, and were rather expensive. That motivated them to try to develop the technology in-house, not only to manufacture a cost-effective solution they could tailor and optimise but also sell to their immediate neighbours at more competitive prices. Tapan Pattnayak, director of system architecture at Addverb, recounts, “Before working at Asian Paints, our cofounder and CEO Sangeet Kumar had been my friend at undergraduate degree level for 4 years. After university I worked in semiconductor design, including at Google, Nvidia and Intel. “During his tenure at Asian Paints he worked on a project in Chennai to create Asia’s largest automation plant, so he talked a lot withme about the shortcomings of automation solutions available for that. So, as he identified costinefficiencies with the systems available, he realised there was a hugemarket for somethingmore cost-effective.” Warehouse weightlifter June/July 2023 | Uncrewed Systems Technology Rory Jackson reports on what it took to create this particularly heavy-duty autonomous logistics vehicle The Dynamo 1000 (or 1T) weighs 250 kg empty, and can carry pallets weighing up to 1000 kg (Images courtesy of Addverb)
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