LogiMAT 2025: Best Product Awards presented

With the "LogiMAT Best Product" award, the jury at LogiMAT 2025 will honor three innovative, future-oriented new developments for greater efficiency, automation and process optimization in intralogistics. From more than 120 applications received, the jury of scientists and journalists selected three products that meet the competitive criteria of increased productivity, cost savings and rationalization in a special way. The prize was presented to the company representatives of the award-winning products on the morning of the first day of the trade fair as part of the opening ceremony. The laudatory speech was given by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Johannes Fottner, Full Professor at the Chair of Materials Handling, Material Flow and Logistics at the Technical University of Munich.

In the "Picking, conveying, lifting and storage technology" category, the jury opted for the new AeroBot product from Knapp (Hall 3, Stand 3B03).

The flexibly scalable AeroBot system is an intelligent system design for robot-operated compact storage and will celebrate its premiere at LogiMAT 2025. The AeroBots are a new generation of warehouse robots that complement the technology company's range of automated warehouse systems. The feature of the autonomous mobile robots (AMR) is the friction drive technology. Supported by lidar technology, the robots can move in three dimensions. This is unique in the industry to date.

The new development also meets the current market requirements for high flexibility and scalability in warehouse design in a special way. The AeroBots move under the shelving system and vertically along the shelves to the specified storage location. There, a small Bot Satellite, which is located directly on the AeroBot, takes over the storage and retrieval of the system containers, the so-called Aeroboxes, which are stored up to four deep and weigh up to 35 kilograms. Another plus: the AeroBots can pick up different loading aids with the system containers. This means that a wide variety of product groups can be stored together in one system. The compact storage system enables heights of up to 12 meters with different shelf heights in one system and offers the highest possible storage density. Process control and the orchestration of the AeroBots and SatBots as well as the integration of the mechanical components into superimposed software systems are handled by Knapp's KiSoft software.

In the category "Identification, packaging and loading technology, load securing", the prize went to the RFID Reader Generation 4 from Kathrein Solutions (Hall 2, Stand 2A17).

The fourth Rain RFID reader generation from Kathrein Solutions, which will be presented at LogiMAT 2025, features numerous innovations that enable new process-optimized logistics applications. The new generation has two device variants: an ARU (Antenna Reader Unit with integrated antenna and 3 outputs for external antennas) and an RRU (Reader Unit with 4 outputs for external antennas).

The integrated antenna in the ARU Gen4 is a circularly polarized "phased-array" antenna system that has three scalable antenna beams. Two of these beams are wide and aligned to the left and right, while the third beam is narrow and aligned straight ahead. With this technology, data can be reliably captured even in complex environments. Positioned on a forklift truck, the device can read all transponders on a pallet reliably and selectively. In this way, for example, a real-time inventory of the transponders attached to a pallet can be carried out while it is still in motion - and reported to the ERP system via the integrated wireless connectivity (WLAN and/or 5G) of the Kathrein Gen4 reader. When forklift trucks load or unload a truck with pallets or pallets change position in the warehouse, the RFID-tagged products are automatically read and their movement registered. Real-time networking eliminates time-consuming and costly recording processes. Additional detection of transponders by RFID gates is also no longer necessary. In addition, power consumption has been reduced by 40 percent and the footprint of raw materials by 50 percent.

PSIwms AI from PSI Software | Business Unit Logistics (Hall 4, Stand 4D41) was awarded the prize in the "Software, Communication, IT" category.

Automation and process optimization characterize the PSIwms AI solution offering. With the AI platform, PSI provides customers with an innovative tool for the analysis, planning and optimization of logistics processes in the warehouse. The AI solution analyses thousands of warehouse operating scenarios every hour and provides optimization recommendations. It is based on a digital twin of the real warehouse, which generates data that is used to train machine learning models (algorithms).

This virtual test warehouse is connected to the WMS and represents the real warehouse by mirroring all relevant processes and features. In this way, it is possible to test non-invasively how the characteristics of the most important KPIs change when adjustments are made in the warehouse. In a reference project, the platform analyzed the relevant processes of a distribution center with 750,000 storage locations and more than 700 employees. As a result, the processes were optimized in such a way that the picking routes were shortened by around 31% and the efficiency of the entire picking process was increased by around 23%.

The AI platform is connected directly to the PSIwms warehouse management system via an interface. This means that changes in the physical warehouse are automatically transferred to a digital twin in real time and taken into account in the analysis. As a unique selling point, changes in the WMS process or a reconfiguration of the system are also automatically included in the AI platform. The AI platform will be demonstrated in Stuttgart using a showcase.