Demand for automated guided vehicles (AVGs) is increasing at a rapid pace. Companies worldwide are expected to invest some USD 1.5 billion in AGVs, while sales from AGVs are expected to increase by almost 75% in 2018.
This predicts research firm Interact Analysis. AGVs are autonomous vehicles that manage to find their destination via dedicated infrastructure in a warehouse or production facility. Here, the vehicles typically pick up a particular crate or, in some cases, even an entire rack and drive it to a human worker, who then retrieves the required products from the crate or rack.
Not new
AGVs are not new. Amazon, for instance, has been using the autonomous vehicles in its fulfilment centres for years; Amazon announced early last year that it was deploying a total of 45,000 AGVs. The company's vehicles were developed by Kiva Systems, which was acquired by Amazon in 2012.
The rapid increase in demand for AGVs is largely due to shifts in consumer purchasing behaviour, according to Interact Analysis. Specifically, the research firm points to the increasing demand for personalised or customised products. As a result, manufacturers are increasingly facing the challenge of no longer producing one product thousands of times, but rather producing products in a small run or even a run of one.
Moving materials more flexibly and accurately
This development is causing manufacturing facilities to change the way they work, something in which AGVs can play an important role. For example, manufacturers are under pressure to move materials to and from production lines more flexibly and accurately. AGVs can do this more efficiently than human workers, according to Interact Analysis, which is driving demand for the autonomous vehicles. In addition, production lines themselves need to be increasingly flexible and physically adaptable. This too is driving demand for AGVs, which are used as an alternative to fixed and inflexible assembly lines. AGVs are more flexible and efficient, and therefore more cost-effective.
However, other factors are also driving the demand for AGVs, including the lack of workers with both the right knowledge and skills and rising labour costs. Companies are therefore increasingly looking at opportunities to automate tasks traditionally performed by human workers, something for which AGVs can be used.
$1.5 billion revenue from AGVs
The rising demand for AGVs is also reflected in the sales that AGV manufacturers managed to realise in 2017. Interact Analysis calculates that these parties totalled nearly USD 1.5 billion in sales in 2017. The top five largest manufacturers of AGVs are Elettric80, Daifuku, Dematic, JBT and Siasun. However, there are many players in the market; the top five manufacturers collectively hold a market share of only 35%. Interact Analysis expects this ratio to change significantly in the coming years.
Despite the rapid growth in demand for AGVs, AGVs remain a relatively small segment of the overall robotics industry. For instance, Interact Analysis points to a report to be published soon predicting that sales from industrial robots will break the USD 14 billion mark by 2022. Mobile robots such as AGVs account for 25% of all robots shipped in the manufacturing industry by 2022 in this forecast.
Author: Wouter Hoeffnagel
Source: Interact Analysis
Source photo: Pixabay / alexanderbeck
