SBIR-STTR Award

Over the past decade, commercial industry has begun to integrate flexible robotic material handling solutions to improve the efficiency and reliability of operations. This has been particularly true for manufacturing facilities and warehouses, which have begun to integrate a wide range of autonomous vehicles for retrieving and moving supplies as well as robotic manipulators for retrieving components. However, military sustainment depots have not yet integrated these emerging technologies, which would enable support personnel to spend more time sustaining vehicle platforms and less time simply retrieving parts and supplies needed for the process. Cybernet has been working with both commercial and military customers to develop autonomous vehicle and material handling solutions to enable exactly these operations. We propose to leverage this past work to develop an autonomous supply retrieval process for use at U.S. military depots, warehouses, and supply points. Specifically, we propose to create an autonomous forklift to retrieve palletized supplies and an autonomous electric tug to carry supplies from the point of storage to the point of use. We will further expand this concept in Phase II to include an integrated system to retrieve individual components for delivery.

Benefit:
The proposed technology will enable autonomous retrieval and delivery of supplies for military vehicle maintenance personnel. Additionally, the technology is directly applicable to line-side delivery for commercial warehouses, manufacturing plants, and other locations

Keywords:
Autonomous Vehicles, Autonomous Vehicles, automated retrieval, robotic material handling, , Automated Delivery

Commercial industry has begun to integrate flexible robotic material handling solutions to improve the efficiency and reliability of operations. This has been particularly true for manufacturing facilities and warehouses, which have begun to integrate a range of autonomous vehicles for retrieving and moving supplies as well as robotic manipulators for retrieving components. However, military sustainment depots have not yet integrated these emerging technologies, which would enable support personnel to spend more time sustaining vehicle platforms and weapon systems and less time simply retrieving parts and supplies needed for the process. During previous efforts, Cybernet demonstrated that our AMHT autonomous vehicle applique kit is capable of automating the key functions of material movement vehicles (forklifts, tugs, etc.) to create an autonomous retrieval and delivery capability. For the current effort, we propose to build on the previous successful technology demonstrations to prepare the technology for successful transition to Navy use. This will include integrating the software with both existing and emerging Navy material management software solutions, improving the usability of deployment, command and control, and monitoring tools, enhancing the overall AMHT capabilities related to Navy mission scenarios, and evaluating requirements for achieving an Authority to Operate or Authority to Test. As part of the Autonomous Retrieval and Delivery project we will outfit an additional autonomous forklift and an additional autonomous tow tractor to use for testing performance and evaluating capabilities at a second Navy facility.

Benefit:
The autonomous retrieval and delivery system will improve the productivity of maintenance operations on Naval installations and help to increase readiness levels for various weapon system fleets. The technology will be directly applicable to other service fleets (Army, Air Force, DLA, etc.) and commercial customers like warehouses, manufacturing plants, etc. We are working with existing commercial customers to deploy a similar autonomous capability.

Keywords:
automated retrieval, Autonomous Vehicles, robotic material handling, Automated Delivery