It started on Monday morning when we arrived and did a final walk-through in the afternoon accompanied by our Evonik contact Marvin Musel. This was then followed by mapping the whole 246,000 m2 site.
We installed the routes the very next morning, although the very large terrain map proved to be a stumbling block that we hadn’t previously come across with other customers. Despite this, the ATo-H was already driving over the factory premises automatically as early as Tuesday. The vehicle then spent the rest of the week driving itself over the approx. 2.5 km route as part of an endurance test. This was quite a challenge because, in addition to the length of the route, the ATo-H also had to deal with a number of inclines. Let's not forget that we did this test during regular operation. The outdoor tugger train had to show how well it was able to detect obstacles in mixed traffic and brake at the appropriate time.
It took less than a day to automate the vehicle and implement the software. The test was a success, which is known as the “proof of concept”, Evonik was impressed with what they saw: As far as we’re concerned, setting up this test is the first step toward fully autonomous logistics processes at the plant, and gave us visible insights into what possible, as well as the challenges that we will need to be mindful of. We wanted to focus on how the device worked, how it interacted with our manual processes and our employees. All in all, it was a very successful test," says Marvin Musel, who is in charge of the project at Evonik.
