42 n SMART WAREHOUSES June 2024 www.drivesncontrols.com Robotic tote-picker halves space at Skechers logistics centre Skechers, the US manufacturer of leisure footwear and clothing, has halved the amount of space it needs to store almost 100,000 tote boxes, as well as improved picking speeds and accuracy at a fulfilment hub in China by introducing an automated, high-density tote storage and picking system. Skechers is using a fleet of 450 mobile robots to ferry totes between the storage system and workstations, acting as mobile pick-and-drop stations. By using so many of the ground-level robots, each carrying loads of up to 30kg, the flow of totes is never interrupted. The facility supplies around 400 Chinese retail outlets and fulfils online orders to customers across China. Narrow, lightweight frames called AirRobs travel both horizontally and vertically between the site’s storage racks, at speeds of up to 2m/s. They travel to a designated location and pick a tote automatically from either side. With the tote on-board, they return to ground level where the load is transferred to one of the mobile robots. The compact frames allow the storage aisles to be just 0.85m wide – narrower than those needed to accommodate the slimmest VNS (very narrow aisle) lift trucks, thus ensuring high storage densities. The ground robots take the totes to workstations where workers remove the contents before placing the boxes back on the robots. The bot then returns to the racking and passes the tote back to Airrob to be stored in an appropriate location. The Skechers project is the biggest application of the AirRob technology since it was launched last summer, and is the latest stage of a multi-phase upgrade of the facility. Skechers awarded LiBiao Robotics the contract to supply and install the tote-handling system after LiBiao supplied a split-level robotic parcel-sorting system for an earlier phase of the logistics centre’s renovation. LiBiao’s overseas sales director, Ronan Shen, says that the AirRob system has halved the storage space that Skechers needs, and increased pick rates in the warehouse. “We believe that the AirRob system fundamentally challenges existing totepicking solutions,” he says. “The exceptional flexibility of the system, its low installation and running costs, and the wide range of existing sites for which it is suitable, means the market potential for this product is extremely high.” The frame infrastructure is compatible with all major makes of racking, provided that the rack is at least 2m high. The ground robots can move underneath the racks. A single workstation can process 600 totes in, and 600 out, every hour, while an AirRob can pick and store some 150 totes per hour, consuming just 150W of power. LinBiao claims that the system can pay for itself in one to two years. It can deliver the benefits and efficiency gains of automated tote-handling without the high costs and lengthy disruption to operations that come with some traditional automated totepicking systems. LiBiao’s sorting robot technology has been developed as a cost-effective and flexible alternative to costly fixed tilt-tray and crossbelt conveyor-based sorting systems that have traditionally been used for parcel, post and e-commerce applications. It takes just one to four weeks to install the technology. There is no need to alter a storage building’s infrastructure, or to apply a special floor treatment. Maintenance is easy, with software updates done remotely, and hardware components replaced as required. The system can be used in cold stores. LiBiao was established in 2016 and last year, an estimated 30 billion parcels were processed using the company’s autonomous mobile robots at sites around the world. In 2023, the company set up a European headquarters in Frankfurt. Several of the biggest names in the European logistics sector already rely on LiBiao robotic sorting technologies, including the Czech Republic’s biggest online fulfilment and parcel delivery business, Packeta, which uses 170 LiBiao robots to sort up to 10,000 packages per hour, and the state-owned postal services provider in Greece, Hellenic Post, which installed a LiBiao system at its Thessaloniki sorting hub in 2022. n A Chinese developer is challenging traditional tilt-tray and conveyor-based sorting systems with a high-density robotic technology which, it claims, can boost storage densities by up to 30% and pay for itself in one to two years. The biggest installation to date is at a Skechers facility in China. The compact AirRob system can pick totes automatically from racks on either side
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