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Vecna Robotics described its Autonomous Counterbalanced Fork Truck, which it unveiled this week, as “a highly versatile, safe, intelligent, and integrated pallet-handling solution.” The mobile robot is the first in the company’s Silverback Series, designed to help distribution, warehousing, and manufacturing organizations move a wider range of payloads and pallet types. The fork trucks are can lift inventory to and from equipment, work alongside other materials-handling vehicles, and help human workers improve throughput, said Vecna.

The autonomous mobile robot (AMR) segment is expected to reach $6.8 billion by 2025, according to Frost & Sullivan. Vecna said growing demand is driven by warehouse operators who need flexible automation to easily and intelligently move pallets at varying heights, weights, and sizes throughout their facilities.

In addition to AMRs, Waltham, Mass.-based Vecna Robotics provides the Pivotal proprietary orchestration engine. Vecna added that its robots are backed with round-the-clock, U.S.-based live support, and proactive monitoring for an industry-leading 99%+ uptime.

Autonomous Counterbalanced Fork Truck adds lift to portfolio

Vecna Robotics said its next-generation AMR offers a vertical lift of up to 72 in. (182 cm). It said the Autonomous Counterbalanced Fork Truck includes dynamic obstacle avoidance to navigate warehouses easily and safely and complies with industry regulations such as ANSI B56.5-2019.

“We have mastered horizontal transport — as evidenced by our hundreds of AMRs deployed across our customers’ sites — and it was clear the next step is to expand our product offerings to include vertical lift,” stated Daniel Theobald, founder and CEO of Vecna Robotics. “Our new Autonomous Counterbalanced Fork Truck allows customers to automate entire workflow processes from end to end. This is the future of robot automation, and we’re excited to be the trailblazer.”

AMR intended to optimize materials handling, logistics tasks

Vecna said its new Autonomous Counterbalanced Fork Truck can streamline materials handling and logistics tasks, including the following:

• Flexible pallet handling: The robot supports pallets of varying sizes and weights, including empty, partial, full, irregular, and double-stacked, with and without bottom boards.
• Warehouse materials hauling: The AMR can move pallets from floor to floor in a facility, including delivering pallets to staging locations within aisles.
• Induction, extraction, and sortation: The fork truck hands off pallets to and from equipment such as conveyors, carts, and wrappers.
• Opportunistic material handling: The system can transport empty pallets, dunnage, or trash on an as-needed basis.

The Autonomous Counterbalanced Fork Truck also works with Pivotal, which analyzes a supply chain organization’s operations and adjusts processes accordingly in real time. Vecna said Pivotal shares information to maximize human-robot collaboration and integrates with existing warehouse management systems.

Vecna Robotics’ autonomous counterbalanced fork truck is available now. More information on the Silverback series is available at the company’s Web site.