RFID technology and market drive forklift AGV to gradually mature

Forklift AGV is loaded with various guidance technologies on the forklift, constructing map algorithms, supplemented by obstacle avoidance safety technology, and achieving unmanned operation of the forklift. As the industry's requirements for automated handling become higher and higher, in the past two years, forklift AGVs that integrate stacking functions and automated guided handling have been favored by application companies. According to statistics from the New Strategic Robot Industry Institute, China Mobile Robotics (AGV) According to industry alliance data, the sales volume of Chinese forklifts AGV (including visual navigation) reached 2,700 units in 2019, an increase of 80% compared to 2018, and a market size of 1.3 billion yuan, an increase of 44% compared to 2018.

It can be seen that the current forklift AGV industry has gradually entered a period of rapid development, and this cannot be achieved without the promotion of many factors.

According to its product characteristics, currently the most widely used scenarios of forklift AGV are high-level warehouses, receiving areas outside the warehouse, and production line transfer. Therefore, it is currently mainly used in manufacturing. In production, forklift AGV can be docked in multiple production links. In various production scenarios such as production lines and warehouses, according to import and export, production lines, upper and lower lines, assembly lines, transmission lines, Stations, shelves, operating points and other needs to achieve a variety of functions. However, due to the diversified development of the manufacturing scene and the increase in requirements for lean production, the forklift AGV also faces some challenges.

In fact, whether it is a laser navigation or visual navigation unmanned forklift, in recent years, due to the promotion of market demand and the entry of a large number of enterprises, the technology of forklift AGV has continued to mature, and with the continuous advancement of current artificial intelligence and other technologies , Unmanned forklifts are also starting to develop in a more intelligent direction.

The industry is trying to apply artificial intelligence technology to forklift AGV in order to improve driving safety, work efficiency and reduce maintenance costs, and other operating costs, to achieve more comprehensive and accurate data collection and analysis applications, and then to achieve other logistics equipment, storage equipment The interconnection between them, from a single product to a systematic application, to achieve overall optimization.

Intelligent forklifts mainly have four key technologies and application advantages: First, the perception technology of forklifts, such as onboard UHF RFID reading and writing technology, effectively recognizes and perceives roadway tags, cargo location tags, and cargo tags, and realizes the outbound storage system. Confirm automatically. The second is the interactive technology with information system dispatching instructions. The most typical are on-board computers and handheld applications, which greatly improve logistics efficiency. Third, the application of various sensors of the forklift, such as speed, weight, collision, temperature, oil pressure, power and other sensing technologies, makes the forklift bus control data more abundant, coupled with system safety early warning, to achieve equipment status monitoring. The fourth is to gather information about the location, task, status, and efficiency of intelligent forklifts into the "industrial vehicle remote platform" for big data processing and output to achieve remote operation and maintenance and lease operations of forklifts.

In general, whether it is the continuous maturity of navigation technology or the application of artificial intelligence technology, the ultimate fundamental goal is to improve the efficiency of unmanned forklifts in the future and better replace labor to minimize costs. Although the overall size of the unmanned forklift market is still small, as a segmented field of the AGV industry, it will replace the vast traditional forklift market in the future with great prospects. And we also believe that the technological innovation of forklift AGV products will gradually mature with the requirements of domesticized body design and market promotion and the improvement of the forklift industry chain. Technology accumulation and continuous innovation-oriented enterprises have huge development space. period.

In addition, it should be noted that at present, the domestic unmanned forklift AGV market has obvious homogeneous competition, which has no benefit to the production enterprises, end customers, and industry development, and homogeneous competition should be avoided. Big waves washing the sand and winning out of survival are inevitable. If Chinese unmanned forklift companies want to develop healthily, they must be market-oriented, have a long-term view, possess core technologies, and have differentiated product characteristics.