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material flow PRODUCT OF THE YEAR 2022 - AGVs, AGVs and robotics category

Balyo: MOWO - Pallet Movement as a Service

The idea behind MOWO: customers should benefit from the automation of their material flows without having to accept the high investment costs that are typical of AGV projects. To achieve this, Balyo developed the MOWO (Pallet Movement as a Service) solution, which offers pallet movement as a service and where companies pay for the pallets moved by the robots. The uniqueness of MOWO lies in the fact that the company has not only developed a financial customer solution - demand-based billing - but has also created further technical customer benefits: Thanks to the internally developed remote control software and cameras, Balyo or even the end customer can remotely monitor and control the robot fleet 24/7, as well as improve it through software updates. Payment is based on the number of pallets moved.

Conductix-Wampfler: Wireless Charger 3.0

Wireless Charger 3.0 is a wireless, inductive energy transfer system for charging batteries on industrial trucks, particularly suitable for occasional charging. With the Wireless Charger 3.0 system, energy is transferred via an air gap without mechanical contact and with a large positioning tolerance. Thanks to the large tolerance range, including for the air gap, the charging infrastructure can also be used by different industrial trucks - even by vehicles with different nominal voltages (between 21 and 59 V). Thanks to the inductive principle, the system has no exposed contact surfaces that are subject to wear or susceptible to faults, which reduces maintenance costs.

Safelog: AGV M4

The Safelog AGV M4 can handle trailer loads of 1,500 kg and a topload of 200 kg at speeds of 0.02 m/s to 1.6 m/s. More and more companies are relying on AGVs for intralogistics transport tasks. However, the purchase of new AGVs often fails due to the high investment required to implement the systems. The problem is that the fewer vehicles are needed to handle a specific process, the more difficult it becomes for many AGV manufacturers to offer a profitable solution. This is mainly due to the fact that a higher-level control station is required for vehicle control. However, this purchase is only profitable from a larger number of vehicles. The Safelog AGV M4 has an agent-based control system that enables the individual vehicles to communicate with each other and with the surrounding production and logistics systems.

In 2021, the reader award materialfluss PRODUCT OF THE YEAR celebrated its second edition, you can find the winners and best placed here.