Challenge
DHL is a leading global brand in the logistics industry, providing national and international parcel delivery to more than 100 countries; e-commerce shipping and fulfillment solutions; international express, road, air and ocean transport; and industrial supply chain management.
Interact Analysis predicts the market for robotic picking will be worth $6.8 billion by 2030, up from $236 million in 2022. As the tight labor market forces logistics providers to automate to address staffing, scalability and other challenges, DHL is no exception. It sought to automate a high-variance task that had been causing sorting facility bottlenecks. DHL Express needed an automated process to reliably pick and place parcels from randomly mixed pallets onto conveyor belts.
Solution
DHL turned to leading integrators Vanderlande and AWL. To ensure the highest success rates in this highly dynamic environment, AWL partnered with Fizyr for its advanced vision and paired it with gripping technology to enable it to handle packages of various sizes and weights.
Custom built for DHL Parcel Benelux, this automation solution – named RODE – reliably picks and places parcels from randomly mixed pallets onto the conveyor belt of DHL’s sorting system uninterruptedly. Fizyr Panoptic™ vision determines the shape of each object, delivers instructions to the robot for pick order and precise grasp techniques and locations. Utilizing those vision-based instructions, the robot ultimately picks a variety of objects quickly and reliably, with virtually no human intervention. With two integrated pallet stations, the robot picks parcels from one random stacked pallet while a DHL employee loads the next pallet, resulting in seamless transitions from pallet to pallet for maximum efficiency.
Results
The robot can lift up to 31.5 kg (69 pounds) and process up to 800 parcels per hour with 99.99% accuracy, automating work that previously required humans to complete. The diversity of arbitrarily packaged and loaded parcels and the high speed at which the robot can depalletize makes this solution uniquely suited to:
“The robot takes over heavier and repetitive tasks. Working with the robot makes it more challenging and more interesting for people simultaneously,” says Roelof Hofman, COO at DHL Parcel Benelux. “With this successful first application in our sorting center in Rotterdam, we will also implement the robot in other sorting centers.”