Revolutionary EX9 Autonomous Terminal Truck heads to CES
Deeptech start-up EX9 today unveils its all-in-one automated eco-friendly transport solution for logistic and manufacturing terminals. EX9 offers Unmanned Transport as a Service dedicated to moving trailers, containers or other heavy loads on sites such as logistics warehouses, distribution hubs or industrial sites.
The service goes global after a successful pilot will DHL France. EX9 aims to lower work hardship, on-site accident risks and improve performance by 30%, while drastically reducing CO2 emissions in the global supply chain exceeding 90%. Its turnkey solution provides operators and industrial companies with fleets of autonomous shunting electric robots and makes automation accessible, safe, and simple to adopt for outdoor use cases in closed compounds. With EX9, logistic sites get efficient and go green!
Logistics (warehouses, hubs, industrial plants) are a key factor for globalized markets. Goods need physically moving from their place of production to the homes, factories and sites where they are expected, and they all rely on fluid supply chains. In an ever-growing e-commerce market, logistics companies need to meet two requirements: resilience and sustainability.
Today, reducing CO2 emissions, ensuring better work conditions to the personnel and making job safer and attractive also add to the list of benefits. With over 450k shunting operators and drivers missing in Europe since Covid, logistic operators are struggling to hire. The question that confronts logistic and manufacturing companies is simple enough: which solutions will help tick all the boxes and harvest the greatest return on investment?
Accelerate automation in logistic sector
From the steam engine to the forklift to today’s robotic pickers and packers, the history of logistics is also a history of automation. However, few solutions are focused on terminals. There is also some confusion at logistics companies about which advanced equipment they truly need and how to integrate them. EX9 addresses these challenges.
The start-up deploys a complete solution for automating terminal movements of heavy loads (trailers, containers, swap bodies, pallets, etc.) by integrating autonomous electric robot-tractors into a site’s operational process, thereby increasing the pre-loading and “drop & hook” shunting operations rate, improving performance and reducing costs and the risk of accidents. Its core is the Autopilot Turnkey system which is based on a software layer that makes robots intelligent, and the service linked to the IT process management.
Developed in-house for heavy loads, the robot’s Autopilot algorithms are based on AI and computer vision and are trained for a dense and dynamic logistics environment, with the addition of dock door identification, real-time mapping, etc. They give the robot complete freedom of maneuvering, in changing environment and weather conditions, and integrate object detection, trajectory planning, dynamic control of the robot, as well as connectivity with the control tower.
The robot knows where it is, which trailer to pick up, where to drop it off and when, where to park or go back to the charging station etc. As an end-to-end solution, EX9 also ensures the integration into the site’s operational process that includes on-board control, API to the fleet management tool and additional functions such as the remote monitoring, data analytics or tele-driving, adapted to the needs of the robots’ supervisors.
According to Ksenia Duarte, CEO of EX9, “At EX9, we deeply believe that now is the right time to make industries more human-centric, deploy solutions to make supply chain more efficient, and adopt more sustainable ways of production and transport. After a successful pilot with DHL France, we are thrilled to launch globally and help accelerating the progress of automation in Industrial Closed compounds with concrete solutions, thanks to our in-house Autopilot Software focused on Logistics’ use cases and fast deployment tools for operations in real conditions.”
Decarbonization and societal goals
Increasing the automation level of a terminal is recognized as the next step towards improving performance. The benefits of automation include lower operational costs as well as enhancing terminal productivity, capacity, safety and security. In a highly competitive global business landscape, operators also face increasingly stringent environmental regulations and extreme need of reducing negative footprint.
In addition to using electric robot-tractors, EX9’s automation solution reduces emissions by optimizing fleet usage, reducing equipment engine idle times and ensuring that machines are always driven with best-in-case trajectories. In France, using the tool provided by the The French Agency for Ecological Transition (ADEME), the solution has been shown to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 94% compared with diesel yard tractors (98% of the current fleet). In addition to CO2 and airborne particulate emissions, noise is an important consideration especially for terminals located in densely populated urban areas.
Moreover, thanks to EX9, each unsafe, time-consuming, and low-value task can be delegated to reliable autonomous robots. This helps increase the working environment to handlers, reduce the hardship of working outside at night, in all weather conditions, and the risk of accidents. Shunting workers can be reassigned to new jobs such as process control, warehouse operations as picking or even monitoring, tele-driving & maintenance of robots.
A tested and approved solution at DHL
Last September, the EX9 autonomous electric robot and suite were deployed and successfully tested by DHL EMEA’s Supply Chain division, for moving trailers, at its Mitry-Mory site, in France.
The site was chosen because it had several types of loading, kind of goods, and in presence of transport and shunting stuff. It handles around two hundred lorry movements a day, both incoming and outgoing, including roughly thirty pre-loading operations. Fluidity is key in a logistics and multimodal transport services. The EX9 solutions contribute to considerably increase preloading (+20%) and thus reducing waiting time transport truck drivers’ while speeding up rotations.
It also allows DHL to increase the practice of ‘drop & hook’, which involves dropping off a trailer and setting off again with one that is already loaded. Eventually, a site like Mitry-Mory could operate with two or three robots. As an example of a logistic hub deploying 10 robots, a 3y service could generate $M1.5 costs savings and 500 tons of GHG reduction (EU-based calculations).
Availability
The EX9 solution is tailored according to the clients’ needs. During CES (Booth Venetian Expo, Hall G – 60801 – Eureka Park), EX9 launches a Discovery offer as a case study diagnostic “How automate your current shunting operations”.
Thus, EX9 offers a takeaway report with analysis of the process and infrastructure, rules to implement, best practices, and calculations about CO2 emissions reduction, TCO/RoI regarding operational efficiency in a customer practical case.
The start-up intends to add some turnkey interview/training modules responding to customers inquiries regarding how to move forward to the automation of their yard/terminal shunting operations.
