Autonomous forklift for trailer loading

A new autonomous forklift from Gideon is being brought to market with a promise of automatic trailer loading and unloading.

The forklift, called Trey, handles pallets without human intervention, Gideon claims.

The forklift was developed with investments from Koch Disruptive Technologies and DB Schenker.

It is built on a purpose-made counterbalance  chassis from Infinity Machine & Engineering Corp., with a maximum payload of 2,500 kg. The li-ion battery can be opportunity charged and runs for approximately eight hours.

Trey uses artificial intelligence and 3D vision to navigate. Its 360-degree field of view allows it to detect obstacles and avoid collisions, the company says. This also means that it is easy to integrate into existing operations, with little need to reconfigure the warehouse space to accommodate it.

Gideon claims the unit can save 80 percent of the labour required to load and unload trailers, with a pallet handling capacity of 25 per hour. It supports most common pallet types, and can load in narrow-narrow (straight), wide-wide (turned), pinwheeled,
load distribution, and custom configurations in most types of trailers.

It integrates with WMS systems to help managing scheduling and inventory control. The app that controls the forklifts can be run from any device.

“We at Gideon believe that we can help exponentially grow humanity’s ability to move goods by automating the most complex material handling workflows,” said Matija Kopić, Gideon CEO and co-founder. “We’ve built an AMR specifically for the task of loading and unloading truck trailers, augmenting human talent.”

Gideon is looking for pilot customers for Trey.