Konoike Transport has partnered with AI software firm Osaro for a new project at the Konoike Institute of Technology Innovation Centre (KITIC) to showcase Japan’s first prototype of automated warehouse operations.
The project features autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) working together with picking robots optimised for warehouse and e-commerce applications that involve large SKU inventories.
The pilot will demonstrate automation of logistics processes by linking inVia Robotics’ AMR and Osaro’s piece-picking robot to provide a smooth path from warehouse inventory to packing and shipping operations.
The picking robot features Osaro’s advanced AI vision system, which enables the robot to perform advanced pick-and-place operations by recognising transparent, deformed, reflective, and irregularly shaped items—even if they are randomly arranged in the inventory storage bins.
According to the partnership, the displacement of traditionally manual tasks by smart robotics is expected to address the global issues of increasing logistics volume and cope with accelerating labour shortages due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
This prototype will aim to prove that tasks such as inventory movement and picking items for order fulfilment can be fully automated. Through this pilot, the partners will work to identify issues that arise when multiple robotics automation solutions are interacting and to resolve these issues ahead of the planned operational deployment.
Tadatsugu Konoike, director and senior managing executive officer at Konoike Transport, said: “We are honoured to be the first in Japan to conduct a demonstration prototype of an Osaro picking solution with an AMR.
“We decided to work with Osaro because we believe that Osaro is superior for use in the rapidly changing logistics field in terms of automatic machine learning, data collection, and accurate picking. Japan is facing a shortage of labour due to the declining birthrate and ageing population, but we hope to turn this challenge into an opportunity and develop a new form of workplace at KITIC and introduce it to the world.”
