With AI into the Silicon Economy

The paper-based consignment note for international road freight transport (CMR) requires a great deal of administrative effort with numerous manual activities due to many different formats, media disruptions and transmission errors. As part of the Silicon Economy, the researchers developed a web-based open source service for generating, storing and forwarding digital consignment notes (eCMR), which is on its way to becoming a European standard.

In future, it should be possible to combine several accompanying transport documents in one digital folder, including the digital consignment note eCMR. So far, there is no solution for bundling digital freight documents, but there is great interest from the industry. The project builds on research results from the Silicon Economy project „Digital consignment note – eCMR“.

The reference implementation of an eFTI platform, which enables authorities to retrieve electronic freight documents, is based on Silicon Economy’s own eCMR development using the example of the digital consignment note.

The VDA5050 standard developed by the VDA and VDMA is an interface for standardizing communication between automated guided vehicle systems or vehicles (AGVs/ATVs) and a master controller. Today’s systems are primarily stand-alone solutions, i.e. the control of AGVs/ATVs is proprietary and therefore manufacturer-specific. The libVDA5050++ – a development from the Silicon Economy – now offers a generic open source implementation of the standard that enables manufacturers of AGVs to convert their vehicles to the standard quickly and without major effort.

There are currently hardly any heterogeneous fleets of mobile robots on the market. Initial efforts towards standardization such as VDA5050 have created great added value, but are limited to the interface between robot and fleet controller and neglect robot-specific topics such as fleet coordination or process mapping and connection to the customer’s system landscape.

In many industrial sectors, defined transportation, handling and storage conditions must be observed for goods. Despite this, transportation is often handled by standard trucks and the regular logistics locations of logistics service providers. The compact Sensing Puck track & trace device now enables shippers and recipients to document and track the transportation conditions and status of the products.

In contrast to most automated guided vehicles, which are either highly efficient, dynamic or flexible and designed for indoor or outdoor use, the O3dyn mobile transport robot combines all three characteristics. O3dyn is not only highly dynamic and autonomous, but also designed for hybrid operation. It can transport large loads the size of a pallet omnidirectionally at a speed of up to 36 km/h. The O3dyn simulation model is a virtual representation of the real outdoor robot.