At MODEX last week, Mujin Corp. showcased its robotic system for streamlining case flows in warehouses. The demonstration included TruckBot for unloading trailers or containers, its mixed-case depalletizing system, and its new Robotic Case Picking order-fulfillment system.
TruckBot fed into two robotic cells that sorted and palletized the inbound freight. The Tokyo- and Atlanta-based company has equipped the system to handle larger and heavier boxes and to perform better when it comes to multi-picking.
“At this show, we focused on full-case warehouse solutions,” Josh Cloer, director of sales at Mujin, told Mobile Robot Guide. “We have essentially the entire workflow of cases in a warehouse in the booth here, so there’s quite a bit going on.”
How Robotic Case Picking works
Mujin said its new system tackles the case-picking workflow within the order-fulfillment process. This is typically a highly manual task that has been difficult to fully automate.
The goods-to-person system is made up of mixed-case palletizing robots working with autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) to pick directly from inventory pallets and build order pallets ready for outbound delivery.
“This is probably for me the most exciting thing that we’re doing in addition to TruckBot,” Cloer said. “[The case-picking robot] is building mixed orders for that direct-to-store delivery clientele. So, that includes food and beverage companies or CPG [consumer packaged goods] companies that either have a retail distribution center that’s next in the distribution chain or direct-store deliveries that they’re fulfilling with their own trucks.”
Manual pickers can go through 150 to 250 cases per hour, but Mujin’s robotic case picker can handle up to 700 cases an hour, depending on the overall order mix, according to Cloer.
All of the overall objectives and individual system tasks are planned and orchestrated by the MujinController. The company said that product can communicate to any warehouse management system (WMS) for information and updates concerning order and inventory management.
Mujin said its robotic case-picking system brings flexible automation to warehouses looking to fulfill more orders without the back-breaking workload that comes with traditional case picking. It also allows customers to shorten delivery windows while reducing picking errors and ergonomic issues for their workforce, the company claimed.
Mujin discusses other offerings
TruckBot can now handle larger and heavier boxes, according to Mujin. The company has also improved its performance when it comes to multi-picking capabilities. It added that TruckBot can reduce manual labor, improve safety, and accelerate warehouse operations.
Mujin also offers robotic palletizing. The company said it engineered these systems for efficient sorting, stacking, and organizing of goods for storage or further processing. It said its mixed-SKU depalletizing systems are suitable for operations receiving mixed loads on pallets.
“We find that there’s a big market in the import market, where there’s a lot of similar cases inside of a container that’s coming from overseas,” Cloer said. “Typically, they’re trying to get that stuff palletized so you can go across the dock and get on a truck and go to whatever is the next step in the distribution chain. So this kind of application that we’re showing is taking loose load containers and turning it into palletized single-SKU pallets.”
The system uses advanced 3D vision and real-time motion planning and is capable of managing a wide variety of pallet loads with zero prior inputs, asserted Mujin.
In addition, the company offers a multi-channel gripper system that allows for opportunistic multi-picking to boost receiving throughput (see image above). The system’s real-time decision-making capabilities allow it to tackle challenging scenarios that use data inputs from vacuum and force-torque sensors to re-attempt picks without damaging the product.
“So, what it’s doing is opportunistic multi-picking,” Cloer said during the demo. “It is deciding when to pick and how many boxes, based on what the order is and based on the opportunity that’s presented. There are 118 different suction channels on that gripper.”
Cloer explained that Mujin can turn on or off every two cups on the gripper, allowing the robot to decide which suction cups to use for which boxes.
Last year, Mujin raised $104 million in Series C funding. The company said it would use the funding to make its MujinController platform more accessible to developers and end users.
In January, Mujin formed a joint venture with Accenture to integrate its robots with Accenture’s digital engineering and manufacturing services.
