Old production machinery has to be replaced due to changed requirements. However, high weight and limited space in plants often make it very difficult to assemble and disassemble big machines or to reposition them. Frequently, this is done by hand using heavy-duty rollers. FORMIC Transportsysteme, a spinoff of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), has developed a semi-automatic transportation system for the replacement of production plants, which works like a swarm.
"Our system consists of several separately driven vehicles. Together, they can lift a weight of up to 40 tons and move it semi-automatically," says Dr. Maximilian Hochstein from KIT's Institute for Materials Handling and Logistics (IFL). For the transportation of heavy loads, up to 15 vehicles can be coupled. "They are connected by radio and equipped with cameras for self-coordination and synchronous acting," Hochstein says.
Video "Swarm solution for load transportation" (in German):
