“Despite the challenging schedule, the design project was a great success. Thanks to a competent team and efficient communication, the pieces snap into place both on the computer screen and when assembling the robot.” says Dimalog’s CEO Jouni Mononen.
Dimalog is the operator in Home-on-Demand courier robot pilot, a project organized by Forum Virium Helsinki. The aim is to test the concept of autonomous robot couriers in urban residential environment. The experiment is part of the 6Aika (Six City Strategy) New solutions in city logistics project that is seeking smart solutions for urban logistics and last mile deliveries. The pilot is taking place in Kalasatama smart city area. Huld’s designers took care of the industrial and mechanical design of the courier robot’s pick-up unit.
“Despite the challenging schedule, the design project was a great success. Thanks to a competent team and efficient communication, the pieces snap into place both on the computer screen and when assembling the robot.” says Dimalog’s CEO Jouni Mononen.
For the course of the agile pilot, the courier robot is delivering fresh meals and select grocery items from REDI’s K-Supermarket to the residents of the Majakka tower building. Customer places an online order in the digital resident service platform Asumi and purchases are collected at K-Supermarket Redi. Courier robot navigates to the customer’s door autonomously in REDI’s corridors, service tunnels and elevators. The robot communicates with humans using a Finnish-speaking speech synthesizer.
Huld’s experts set out to design the transport robot’s pick-up unit based on customer, manufacturing and end-user requirements. The mechanical and industrial design had to take into account the manufacturability and easy assembly of the pick-up unit in order to make the manufacture of the courier robot cost-effective in the future.
It was also essential in the design to pay attention to the physical appearance and usability of the pick-up unit so that the product would be well received by users. The designed pick-up unit is easy to use both when loading at the store and when the customer unpacks the shopping.
The robot’s operations were also subject to many requirements, which were developed by Huld’s experts together with the customer. For example, the shelf life of refrigerated products and the locking of the pick-up unit during transport were essential for easy and safe use.
“This type of agile development is typical for us at Huld. We best serve the customer when we are a close part of the customer’s own product development. We quickly turn the customer’s idea into a feasible product through concepts, taking into account the requirements of the customer, manufacturing and the end user.” commented project manager Jaakko Haapasalmi from Huld.
Huld’s designers are looking forward to what kind of reception the autonomous courier robot will receive from the residents of the Majakka tower building.
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Jaakko Haapasalmi,
Dimalog Oy is a Helsinki-based technology company specializing in mobile and collaborative robotics. We offer our customers solutions that provide easily measurable and scalable benefits to production and logistics processes. We manufacture and design applications, systems and software solutions for manufacturing industry, logistics and the public sector.
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