MHD TECHNOLOGY
STOCKTAKING DRONES A recent partnership between Dexion and Infinium Robotics will give an accessible and practical application to drones in Australia’s warehouses.
“M
any major technology organisations are developing drones. These include Google, Amazon and Boeing. Much of the focus from tech giants is to deliver individual orders to consumers via drones. While this is an impressive development of technology, it’s not overly practical”, Martin Kramer, Head of System Solutions at Dexion says.
Dexion has exclusive distribution rights for the Infinium drones in Australia and New Zealand.
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“There are always big jumps in the development of technology, like AGVs, like drones or visual readers. Being able to combine these different technologies usually comes with lots of complexities, but once achieved can create a demand for a number of unique applications,” Martin says Martin is referring to the new offering that Dexion will be
bringing to the Australian market. Dexion has signed an exclusive partnership agreement with Infinium Robotics to distribute its latest autonomous stocktaking drones in Australia and New Zealand. “Dexion is always looking to be at the forefront of technology adoption. With drones, there has been many legislation issues, it was really a wild west for a while there. But we wanted to explore opportunities where the technology could be used much more practically in a logistics setting,” Martin says. The Dexion Infinium Scan drone is a fully autonomous drone that aids in inventory management for full pallets and reconciles differences with warehouse management systems automatically. “The real point of difference with this kind of application for drone technology is that the drone operates with an automated guided vehicle (AGV),” Martin explains. According to Martin, this kind of combination has never been done before but offers a number of benefits. The drone is attached to the AGV which provides greater path integrity – it constantly communicates with the AGV. Additionally, the AGV powers the drone – which means the drone can fly for up to four hours without running out of power. “There is a small cable that attaches the drone to the AGV so the AGV can stop the drone if something gets in the way, for example,” Martin says. The drone can rise up to 80 feet and scan along one layer of stock, then the AGV can direct it to move down one layer and it repeats the process over and over until the entire stock take is done. “In today’s warehouses, the segregation of staff and equipment
