Arauco, a global wood products supplier, recently signed a pre-order of 100 DriveMod autononous forklifts from Cyngn Inc. The deployment includes REV7 lidar sensors to provide self-driving capabilities and to detect pallet stack attributes, noted Ouster Inc.
“Cyngn is pushing the boundaries of industrial autonomy with their AI-powered DriveMod platform,” stated Angus Pacala, CEO of Ouster, in a release. “By adding our high-performance REV7 sensors to the DriveMod platform, Cyngn gives 'eyes' to its industrial vehicles, allowing them to navigate seamlessly and extract rich insights from their environment in any condition.”
San Francisco-based Ouster claimed that it is a leading global provider of high-resolution scanning and solid-state digital lidar sensors. The company also provides Velodyne Lidar sensors and software for the automotive, industrial, robotics, and smart infrastructure industries.
DriveMod includes REV7 sensor
DriveMod includes Ouster's lidar, Cyngn's software stack and artificial intelligence models, and other autonomous vehicle (AV) hardware components. The autonomy platform can be installed in new vehicles off the assembly line or retroffited into existing vehicles, said Menlo Park, Calif.-based Cyngn.
The company said that DriveMod is part of its Enterprise Autonomy suite, along with the Cyngn Insight customer-facing suite of AV tools for fleet management, teleoperation, and analytics, plus the Cyngn Evolve internal data toolkit for AI, simulation, and modeling.
“With advanced lidar sensing, the DriveMod platform performs at levels higher than autonomous industrial vehicles that use legacy sensor technology,” asserted Cyngn.
Since partnering with Ouster in January 2023 and adding the REV7 digital sensor to DriveMod, Cyngn said it has delivered products to customers. The company has also collaborated with Columbia Vehicle Group to manufacture electric DriveMod Stockchasers, Motrec on DriveMod Tuggers, and other leading manufacturers for DriveMod Forklifts to meet growing mobile robot demand.
Cyngn uses lidar for navigation, palletizing
Cyngn said it has developed proprietary computer vision algorithms that are bundled into a Pallet Stack Attribute Estimation sub-system within the DriveMod perception stack. DriveMod also uses lidar to inform the location of its vehicles within the site.
Fusing sensor data from lidar and other sensors, Cyngn said its advanced autonomy software enables:
- Position and pose estimation of DriveMod Forklifts within a site with centimeter-level accuracy and six degrees of freedom
- Detection and identification of pallet stacks
- Precise localization and orientation of pallet stacks relative to the DriveMod lift truck
- One-shot pallet stack enumeration (counting the number of pallets in a stack from a single viewing)
- Detection of edges and center of pallet pockets
“Ouster's high-quality sensors enable the impressive performance of Cyngn's autonomous vehicles,” said Lior Tal, CEO of Cyngn. “The vertical field-of-view the lidar provides is critical for indoor environments and gives DriveMod Vehicles more coverage of blindspots than a human operator.”
The company noted that DriveMod, supplemented by Ouster lidar and installed in a growing number of material handling vehicle models, will help manufacturers and others around the globe tackle labor shortages, enhance workplace safety, and improve operational efficiency.
Arauco adopts BYD forklifts
Arauco needed to move large, heavy wood bundles on non-standard pallets, but other industrial automation had failed to meet its requirements. The forestry products company initially selected Cyngn for a project based on DriveMod's demonstrated ability to autonomously operate many different vehicle types.
Cyngn successfully executed the project with BYD, resulting in what it said was a “first-of-its kind electric autonomous BYD forklift.” It also described that system as the DriveMod Forklift. That pilot led to the new contract.
Arauco's order of 100 DriveMod Forklifts represents up to $5 million in annual recurring EAS license revenues, said Cyngn. However, it will address only a small portion of Arauco's existing forklift fleet, so there is room for further growth, it added.
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