Industrial trucks: Sustainability and full automation are the future of intralogistics

16 October, 2023

The rise of automation

Material handling is also a perfect fit for the future trend of digitalisation and automation. Many vehicle sectors already offer vehicles that are fully robotic or remote controlled, which is also new territory from an engineering point of view. Until now, most vehicles have been designed for manual use by human operators and then converted into AGVs (automated guided vehicles) or AMRs (autonomous mobile robots). The future standard will be to develop cars for driverless or autonomous operation from the outset. Industrial trucks are particularly well-suited for this purpose. The warehouse as a delimited, structured space with clear processes and constant conditions offers an ideal environment for the use of AGV and AMR systems.

This development is also fuelled by the booming online trade: After the coronavirus pandemic, businesses have come to realise that warehousing in Europe provides important buffer capacity to ease the strain on the supply chains. As a direct consequence, a growing number of warehouses and logistics centres are being established across Europe. There is also an increasing awareness that Industry 4.0 needs to be implemented not only in manufacturing, but also in intralogistics. The factor of AI can also play an important role here in the future.

The warehouse of the future will therefore operate on a largely autonomous basis. The development is heading towards a lights-out warehouse, meaning a fully automated, AI-controlled warehouse that operates without any or minimal human intervention. The name stems from the fact that such a warehouse no longer requires lighting because all working steps are performed by machines

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