As FedEx and UPS beef up automation to keep pace with surging e-commerce and a potential threat from Amazon, they’ve been stumped at a crucial stage: loading and unloading trucks. Robot makers are getting close to solving part of that puzzle.
Siemens AG and Honeywell International Inc. have built machines that pull packages from the back of a tractor-trailer and place them on conveyor belts, whizzing the parcels off for sorting. Making robots that can load trucks is more complicated, although clearing that hurdle isn’t far off.
Automated unloaders took years to develop and still haven’t been perfected, reflecting the difficulty of working with an array of packages that are stacked differently from truck to truck. The machines also need space within logistics hubs and warehouses that are already packed with equipment. The Siemens contraption requires modification of a truck’s trailer. Honeywell’s doesn’t, but isn’t as fast at unloading.
Siemens took a different approach. A rolling belt must be permanently installed on the truck trailer’s floor with packages loaded on top. When the trailer is at the loading dock, a large machine is attached to the belt and packages are pulled in and sent to the sorting hub. Unloading a standard trailer takes about 10 minutes, compared with approximately an hour for one person moving the boxes.
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