Omnidirectional Forklift

Omni Directional Forklift Wheels
Omni Directional Light
Omni Wheel Forklift
Sideways Driving Forklift
Omnidirectional Wheel
Omni Directional Forklift Wheels

Agilox has expands its line of intelligent guided vehicles by introducing a new autonomous omnidirectional counterbalanced forklift, operating with swarm intelligence. In doing so, the company has entered a new area of application: classic intralogistics in inbound/outbound warehousing and storage.

Omni-Directional Wheels The angled rollers on these wheels allow vehicles to move forward, backward, sideways, and turn in place when each wheel is used with an independent drive. Often used on automated vehicles and in robotics, they are also known as mecanum wheels. The omni-directional manufactured by Omni-Robot adapt move drive technology and it can achieves accuracy of up to +/- 10 mm. Innovation, Flexibility and Service is the ethos on which Combilift’s success is built and has seen us become the world’s fastest-growing forklift manufacturer, exporting to more than 85 countries and with more than 50,000 trucks in use worldwide. Omnidirectional trucks. Omnidirectional technology (such as Mecanum wheels) can allow a forklift truck to move forward, diagonally and laterally, or in any direction on a surface. An omnidirectional wheel system is able to rotate the truck 360 degrees in its own footprint or strafe sideways without turning the truck cabin.

With the ONE, Agilox’s ultralight, high efficiency forklift product line, the company has reshaped the concept of AGVs. The fleets operate without a central control system, meaning the vehicles navigate the production facility or warehouse in a truly autonomous fashion. The exceptionally compact Agilox IGVs organise their routes according to the decentralised principles of swarm intelligence, making them much more flexible than traditional AGVs. Additionally, programming or “teaching” the vehicles becomes significantly easier, while central software programs including maintenance, updates, etc. are rendered obsolete—an innovation that lowers operating costs.

Agilox is now expanding its range of IGVs to include the OCF, an abbreviation for Omnidirectional Counterbalanced Forklift. While the ONE is equipped with a scissor lift to function as a load handling device (and thus transports the load within the vehicle contour), the OCF is designed according to the principles of the counterbalanced forklift. Hence, it can pick up pallets, lattice boxes, and other load carriers with a maximum weight of 1500kg (3300lbs), transport them to the destination, and set them down at a height of up to 1600 mm (63 in).

Agilox’s intelligent and cost-saving IGV concept opens up new application areas. While the ONE vehicles are mainly used for material supply in production, the OCF enables classic intralogistics tasks in incoming and outgoing goods, order picking and storage, as well as in production—provided that the transport is pallet-bound.

Just like the ONE, the OCF uses an omnidirectional drive concept. It can therefore also drive sideways through narrow aisles, turn on the spot, and manoeuvre in the tightest of spaces. The same lithium-ion (LiFePO4) battery technology ensures short charging and long operating times – just three minutes of charging allows for up to one hour of operating time.

The IGV fleets can be connected to customer software systems (LVR, ERP, WMS, MES, etc.) via an open API interface. An optional IO box enables the integration of external infrastructure, such as rolling gates and stationary conveyor systems, in the intelligent control system. An analytics module provides the user with all relevant operating data and KPIs.

“The OCF is a logical addition to round out our product portfolio,” says Franz Humer, CEO of Agilox. “With it, we open up opportunities in storage and order picking technology, and thus, a large market in which the IGVs can showcase their advantages over both AGVs and man-operated forklifts.”

The combined operation of the ONE and OCF in a ‘swarm’ also provides a great advantage. For instance, while the smaller vehicles carry out delivery services to assembly workstations or tend to e-Kanban shelves, the OCF can, using the same control system and WiFi infrastructure, take over pallet transport.

The OCF pilot series has already been successfully tested in Vorchdorf, Austria. Series production will begin shortly, with the first OCFs set to be delivered to customers in the first quarter of 2021.

Triple Rotacaster commercial industrial omni wheel

A simple omni wheel. The free rotating rollers (dark gray) allow the wheel to slide laterally

A molded plastic omni wheel

Omni wheels or poly wheels, similar to Mecanum wheels, are wheels with small discs (called rollers) around the circumference which are perpendicular to the turning direction. The effect is that the wheel can be driven with full force, but will also slide laterally with great ease. These wheels are often employed in holonomic drive systems.

A platform employing three omni wheels in a triangular configuration is generally called Kiwi Drive. The Killough platform is similar; so named after Stephen Killough's work with omnidirectional platforms at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Killough's 1994 design used pairs of wheels mounted in cages at right angles to each other and thereby achieved holonomic movement without using true omni wheels.^[1]

They are often used in intelligent robot research for small autonomous robots. In projects such as VEX Robotics, Robocup and FIRST Robotics, many robots use these wheels to have the ability to move in all directions. Omni wheels are also sometimes employed as powered casters for differential drive robots to make turning faster. Omniwheels are often used to allow for movement on the horizontal axis on a drivetrain, as well as forward and backward movement. Usually, this is achieved by using an H-drive.

Omniwheels combined with conventional wheels provide unique performance properties, such as on a six-wheeled vehicle employing two conventional wheels on a center axle and four omniwheels on front and rear axles.^[2]

History[edit]

The wheel was first patented in 1919 by J. Grabowiecki.

US patent 1305535, J. Grabowiecki, 'Vehicle wheel', issued 1919-06-03

A variant of the wheel was patented by Josef F. Blumrich in 1972.

US patent 3789947, Josef F. Blumrich, 'Omnidirectional wheel', issued 1974-02-05

Blumrich claimed that the design is described in the Book of Ezekiel as a component of a spacecraft created by extraterrestrial life, which is why the wheel is sometimes jokingly called the 'Ezekiel wheel'. The Spaceships of Ezekiel describes his process for the 'discovery' and recreation of the Omni wheel as well as a traveling craft and its docking station.^[3]

A recent invention is the so-called Liddiard Wheel, which claims to be a superior omnidirectional wheel.^[4]^[5]

New rotary chassis — Rotor Wheels 3x1: https://vk.com/photo-57870566_457242614

Applications[edit]