A couple of weeks ago, I referred to Each Picking Mobile Robotics as one of the “Holy Grail’s” of Warehouse Automation. Since that article, we have ‘unshackled’ ASRS systems to increase performance before ‘unbridling’ them to provide the flexibility to run a modern fulfilment system. This week, we finally get to have a look at how this technology is evolving to perform the complex task of an efficient robotic unit/each pick on an autonomous mobile platform.
For Bastian Solutions, the journey into toward the ‘holy grail’ started with their Servus Shuttle. This was one of the first true ‘fixed-free path’ roaming shuttles. This streamlined robotic shuttle solution was designed to leave the storage buffer travelling on simple aluminium tracks and transport each unit load to a specific destination eliminating the need for a lot of sortation, accumulation, etc. But that wasn’t enough for them, next they fitted a 6-axes robot to enable the shuttle to perform picking tasks as well. And then finally, as mentioned last week, at ProMat 2019 they released the Bastian Robotic Shuttle System (BRSS) which went true ‘free-path’ with a dual drive system which enables it to travel on the aluminium track like the Servus but also on flat floors enabling enhanced AMR-like movements when outside the storage buffer (more on this later). This solution also has some other design features we have not seen in previous iterations of this technology.