We are pleased to announce that we have partnered up with MetraLabs, a company who produces autonomous inventory robots, known as TORY. These robots use RFID technology to provide data on stock levels in a number of different applications.
How the TORY robots work
You may recognize these TORY robots from many warehouses and a number of retail stores. These robots can manoeuvre around complex areas using a navigation software designed in house by MetraLabs with a 3D obstacle avoidance system in place as well. Whilst manoeuvring around these areas the TORY robots use RFID technology to automatically take stock of all items nearby at an excellent degree of reading accuracy of 99%. One of the main retail users of the TORY robot is the German fashion company Adler. For Adler, they started out by undergoing a test phase of TORY which proved to be successful, leading to TORY being implemented in more Adler stores. The Adler stores required no modifications to allow for the implementation of TORY which meant that in December of 2015 it was permanently deployed into Adler stores requiring very little time to do so. TORY gathers the data at night which is then transferred via Wi-Fi to Adler’s inventory management system. From implementing TORY, Adler found that they were able to improve their product availability whilst also optimizing their ordering processes. Alongside Adler, TORY is used in many other businesses such as Conrad, Schuhe, and Catalyst. At Codegate, we have been working on making TORY robots more suitable for warehouses and manufacturing scenarios. This work involves making modifications to allow for greater scanning height and visibility to make the TORY robots more applicable to our kind of scenarios.
Our Partnership
Our partnership with MetraLabs brings us the responsibility for the distribution of the TORY RFID robots throughout the UK. With the use of RFID within the TORY robots we believe to be a perfect fit for a partnership through our many years of work within this industry. Modifications that we have been working on include a telescopic antenna array that can provide a greater scanning height, a high visibility paint finish, and flashing lights to provide extra safety whilst it is in operation. The TORY robots are also now fully integrated with our Lime software so that they can deliver asset location data automatically. We plan on incorporating TORY robots into large warehouses and production facilities. These robots will be used to travel around these zones using their RFID technologies to detect and take stock of all items currently situated nearby. The benefit of using the TORY robot in these cases is that they can provide information on what is within the location whilst operating at a low cost. The alternatives to a TORY robot can all end up being highly costly or very time consuming. For example, the price of a TORY robot would be much cheaper than setting up an entire warehouse area with fixed RFID readers for full coverage real-time location system. The cost to implement a TORY system can be an order of magnitude less compared to implementing full fixed RFID coverage reader coverage of the whole warehouse. A TORY robot is a great alternative to the traditional as it can be highly efficient with savings, easy to implement, whilst still maintaining the high standards of quality and accuracy required for such a job.
If you have any further questions or would like to inquire into these TORY robots and their services please feel free to contact us.