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Just a Fleet Away: ForwardX Robotics’ 10-AMR System Giveaway

March 31, 2023 by Stephanie Leonida

One lucky U.S. company could win a fleet of ten Flex autonomous mobile robots as part of ForwardX Robotics’ newly announced competition.

ForwardX Robotics will be giving away ten bots from its Flex family of autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) to a lucky competition winner. The AMR-focused end-to-end solutions provider announced the commencement of the competition at the North American tradeshow for distribution, warehouse, and supply chain industries, ProMat 2023. The AMR fleet giveaway will include bots from ForwardX’s Flex family, accessories, and the f(x) Fleet Manager. 


The winner of ForwardX’s competition can add accessories to their Flex family of AMRs, including picking racks (left) and handling racks (right). Image used courtesy of ForwardX Robotics

 

Flexible Automation

Flexible automation offers numerous benefits for manufacturing and warehousing industries, such as increasing productivity, reducing labor costs, and improving quality control. A flexible system allows warehouse and manufacturing floor managers to adapt to changes in workflow, product mix, and customer demand. 

AMRs can be used for picking and packing tasks, which reduces the need for manual labor. Additionally, it can help reduce errors in the production process by providing a more accurate and efficient way of carrying out tasks. AMRs can help increase safety for workers, particularly concerning moving heavy boxes, crates, and other items. An AMR can mitigate the occurrence of accidents from material handling otherwise conducted by human workers. 


ForwardX's Flex family of AMRs are ideal for handling production line materials, moving racking, and case and piece picking

ForwardX's Flex family of AMRs are ideal for handling production line materials, moving racking, and case and piece picking. Image adapted and used courtesy of ForwardX Robotics

 

ForwardX Flex Series AMRs

Today, bots like ForwardX’s Flex family integrate machine vision systems (with laser scanners, as well as 2D and depth cameras) to sense objects or obstacles in their path and react promptly to avoid them. ForwardX’s Flex family of AMRs features 360-degree obstacle avoidance to keep bots on track and maintain workflow efficiency. 

The Flex family of AMRs also features autonomous charging and comes with a touch-enabled user interface to help guide customers through workflows. Additionally, the AMRs can be set up to interface with printers, multi-level workspaces, and radio frequency identification scanners. All three of ForwardX's Flex AMR models (the Flex 300-L, Flex-300LS, and Flex 300-SCB) have a payload capacity of 300 kg and provide optional navigation modes (e.g., natural, hybrid, follow, road network). Laser simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), visual tag, and visual semantics modes enable the AMRs' positioning. 

ForwardX’s Flex family of bots is ideally suited for handling production line materials, moving racking, and case and piece picking.  

 

ForwardX's f(x) Fleet Manager for AMR fleet control

ForwardX’s f(x) Fleet Manager helps users to monitor and corroborate their AMR fleets. Image used courtesy of ForwardX Robotics

 

The f(x) Fleet Manager

The lucky winner of ForwardX’s competition will be able to use ForwardX's f(x) Fleet Manager software platform to coordinate their AMR fleet's operations. The f(x) Fleet Manager processes data and information from existing systems—whether a warehouse management system or manufacturing execution system—to generate fleet status updates and schedule operations.

The f(x) Fleet Manager provides full visibility of AMRs within deployed fleets, keeping track of whether robots have sufficient charge and organizing appropriate times for (some or individual) robots to charge when required. Customers can analyze operational efficiency and generate both human and vehicle efficiency statistics.

 

Just a Fleet Away

ForwardX’s competition became open to competitors on March 20, 2023, and will remain open until April 30, 2023. Company’s wishing to begin their flexible automation journey by entering ForwardX’s competition can do so by visiting ForwardXEnter for a Chance To Win page.