Hai Robotics (海柔创新), a leading domestic AMR developer, launched what it calls the world’s first autonomous case-handling robotic system (ACR) tailored to cold chain storage and logistics on April 25.
This marks a step toward extending the application of its ACR product lines to retail and medical industries.
Hai Robotics’s ACR products, which can handle up to 9 cases simultaneously, is able to operate stably for a long time at a temperature as low as -20°C, helping to improve the overall cold storage operation efficiency by 2-3 times.
The robot, which can be fully charged within 16 minutes, supports uninterrupted picking and sorting tasks in a cold storage business.
After the merchandise is chucked into bins, the ACR robot will autonomously sort and transfer items across the warehouse floor.
HaiStation, a self-developed order scheduling system, will then transfer the goods from the -20°C cold storage to a so-called “buffer zone” for picking operations.
This method not just reduces the number of times cold storage doors are opened and closed, lowering the energy consumption by 10%.
What’s more, it also frees manpower and save 30% of labor cost, helping enhance efficiency in the cold storage industry.
As demand surges for frozen foods and fresh produce across China in recent years, logistics service providers are under greater pressure to handle the transportation and deliver orders to customers in a faster and more economical manner.
The cold storage ACR from Hai Robotics is suitable for frozen and refrigerated warehouses for seafood, frozen goods, pastries, ice cream, fruits, and vegetables, as well as for blood products, insulin, vaccines, and other injectable drugs, the company claimed.
The unmanned storage of goods in the low-temperature storage area, combined with the HaiQ intelligent storage management platform, also developed by Hai Robotics, can realize storage digitalization and information traceability of medicines, lowering the risk of cross-infection between personnel and medicines.
In the retail and grocery industry, ACR not only enables high-density low-temperature storage of fresh food, fruits, and vegetables, but also realizes efficient movement into and out of storage rooms for food and fresh produce under Hai Robotics’s easy-to-use, flexible HaiPick system scheduling, the company said.
