Mitsubishi rolls out new integrated warehouse robotic system
Japanese aerospace company Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) started selling driverless forklifts for warehouse operators grappling with rising e-commerce demand coupled with chronic labor shortages.
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) on Thursday started selling driverless forklifts for warehouse operators grappling with rising e-commerce demand coupled with chronic labor shortages, a move by the Japanese machinery maker to shift from manufacturing into services.
The unmanned system comprises a forklift for pickup and loading, autonomous mobile robots for moving around cargo, and a robotic arm to sort them out. The forklift uses laser beams to measure its position within the warehouse, and sensors to place its fork in an exact position under the pallet.
Japanese aerospace company Mitsubishi Heavy Industries started selling driverless forklifts for warehouse operators grappling with rising e-commerce demand coupled with chronic labor shortages.
The unmanned system comprises a forklift for pickup and loading, autonomous mobile robots for moving around pieces of cargo, and a robotic arm to sort them out. The forklift uses laser beams to measure its position within the warehouse, and sensors to place its fork in an exact position under the pallet.
In two to three years, the company aims to develop an even more sophisticated forklift that can navigate around obstacles on its own, pick up randomly placed cargo, and load and unload cargo on and off a truck, says Atsushi Matsuo, senior manager at MHI's logistics system division.
"We aim for sales of hundreds of millions of dollars by 2030," he said during a media demonstration in Yokohama on Wednesday. The company is targeting drinks and frozen food makers as well as other businesses whose products are stocked in large, heavy loads.
The demonstration was held in a former turbine factory that has been converted into a business incubation facility.
The Japanese conglomerate is a leading producer of forklifts, with a 34% share of the Japanese market last year. Globally, it ranked fourth, with 10% of the market, according to the company. Its attempt to develop an unmanned warehouse is part of an effort to move up the value chain as it faces growing competition from Chinese and South Korean rivals.
"We want to be a provider of solutions rather than discrete products," Matsuo said. The company hopes to add more sophisticated features like obstacle avoidance simply by upgrading software, he said.
The unmanned system is a relatively late move by MHI to join the shift away from traditional manufacturing. Other manufacturers such as automakers are already well on their way to developing self-driving vehicles. Heavy machinery makers like MHI have been cautious about getting into self-driving technology because it requires a heavy investment that might not be justified in relatively small markets such as forklifts. But the rapid growth of e-commerce and growing labor shortages have made such investment unavoidable.
The company's rival and the world's largest forklift maker, Toyota Industries, is also racing to develop a self-driving forklift.
Komatsu, a Japanese maker of dump trucks and excavators, has been selling self-driving dump trucks since 2008 that can safely pass each other on the road in settings such as huge mineral mines. Komatsu says the offering is in response to greater demand for self-driving trucks. In mining operations, far more trucks are required than excavators, hence a greater need for unmanned trucks. Automating excavation has also proved more difficult because the excavator needs to know where to dig and by how much. Komatsu is currently developing a system in which unmanned trucks and excavators work together autonomously.
Investors in Mitsubishi Heavy Industries have been calling for more stable revenue after the company posted significant losses on large projects, such as developing passenger jets and cruise ships. The shift to the solutions business is one way to address these concerns. MHI is also developing autonomous solutions for urban transit systems, defense equipment and cargo handling operations for container ships.
"Our goal is to create a fully automated warehouse," Matsuo said.
