A South African start-up – that has developed an airborne scanner – is taking the lead when it comes to revolutionising the warehousing industry.
According to Jasper Pons, founder of DroneScan, they are currently piloting the device with a major European company.
“DroneScan takes the function of a handheld scanner used in warehouse operations to check inventory and simply makes it airborne,” he said. “It packages the ability to scan in the air on a drone and send the information back to a base station for integration with warehouse systems.”
With the pilot project nearly 70% complete, the forecast for DroneScan is extremely positive.
“We believe it will be part of normal operations in large warehouses in five years. It will be a tool of the trade, like forklifts and scissor cages are today,” said Pons.
The system sees a barcode scanner attached to the DJI Matrice 100 drone.
“We have selected this platform due to its indoor stability and guidance package, an array of sensors and cameras that allow us to manage indoor stability and navigation,” explained Pons. It's more than just a scanner; we incorporate our own distance and movement sensors and an internal map of the warehouse dimensions to offer a scan that tells warehouse operations what location or rack we have scanned and can compare in real time if the expected pallet is in its place or not.”
The benefits, he said, at a simplistic level could be boiled down to speed.
To read this and other FTW articles from the latest warehousing/depots & packaging feature, click here.
