are, know how many are in a stack,” says Landen. “When you are just stacking boards of wood, you can stack 30ft high, and they’ll survive. You can’t really do that with consumer-packaged goods.” The development led to a pre-order of 100 units from Arauco, which are due to be rolled out in mid-2024. The company plans to make the forklift available in an off-the- shelf capacity around the same time, which will see it join its existing Autonomous Tugger and Autonomous Stock Chaser products, equipped with the same kind of automated tech. Both have a 6,000lbs capacity and the latter can be operated both autonomously and in manual mode. Landen admits that further technological


development was required for the forklift because its previous vehicles lacked the key namesake contraption. “The Stock Chaser and Tugger are such


similar vehicles in terms of their form and how they drive – even down to the level of the controllers that are used inside – that… [adapting the tech] is something we can do in a matter of weeks. The forklift took months, because it is so different, and we had to develop some unique algorithms on the computer vision side to detect where the pallets are – and we had to automate the forks.”


HUMAN EMPLOYMENT For all its ingenuity, it is impossible to ignore the impact of AI and automated tech on human employment. Bluntly, an unmanned forklift does not need a person to drive


Texas-based Fox Robotics has produced an autonomous forklift known as FoxBot.


Its camera system between the forks perceives depth and aids the pallet detection tech.


FoxBot is said to be capable of unloading 25 pallets an hour. Overhead Crane Material Handling Industry Supplement | November 2023 | xvii


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