Drones in intralogistics

Working group founded

Marvin Meyke, 21.02.2019, 11:00

Drones in intralogistics

Initial projects and business models show: Drones in warehouses are no longer a dream of the future. A working group of the VDMA trade association aims to identify challenges and analyze potential.

The areas of inspection, inventory, monitoring and material transportation in particular could be important areas of application for drones in warehouses in the future. © doks. innovation GmbH

The commercial use of drones in warehouse and production processes is to be discussed in the newly founded working group of the VDMA Materials Handling and Intralogistics Association. On January 31, not only member companies of the association met in Frankfurt, but also providers of commercial drone solutions, users and representatives from research. Tim Mackerodt (doks.innovation), Michael Wiest (ZF Friedrichshafen), Enrico Neumann (IAV GmbH Ingenieurgesellschaft Auto und Verkehr), Markus Lieret (Chair of Manufacturing Automation and Production Systems at the University of Erlangen) and Dr.-Ing. Hans-Peter Kany (BGHW Berufsgenossenschaft Handel und Warenlogistik) provided fascinating insights into the topic.

Challenges: Acceptance and safety issues
The potential areas of application for drones in intralogistics are diverse. The experts prioritized inspection, inventory, monitoring and material transport as the main areas of application. The participants saw challenges above all in terms of acceptance - also with regard to data protection issues, as well as the clarification of aviation and labor law safety issues. The German Social Accident Insurance (DGUV) provides an overview of the latter with "Unmanned Aircraft Systems - UAS (drones) - Classification and legal framework". The BGHW is currently working on updating this in an advisory capacity to the working group. Another task of the committee is to develop uniform technical standards. The next meeting of the working group is scheduled for May 27, 2019.

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