Self-driving forklifts that avoid obstacles and load trucks deployed at Korean factory for the first time

Hyundai Wia is putting autonomous forklifts into a real manufacturing site for the first time in South Korea. The company said on Sept. 7 that it will begin supplying forklifts under its mobile robotics brand, H-Motion, to Kia’s Autoland Hwaseong plant from May next year.

The forklifts can move around the factory on their own, carry goods placed on pallets, and handle loading and unloading work at trucks. They use lidar sensors and cameras to identify people, obstacles, and other equipment, allowing them to transport cargo without collisions.

The vehicles learn routes from a simulated layout of the factory and find their own paths through the site. Hyundai Wia placed particular emphasis on automated loading and unloading, a more demanding task than simply moving cargo across a warehouse.

The company said it accounted for changes in the height of a truck’s cargo bed as goods are loaded or unloaded. It also considered the slopes that forklifts encounter when entering and leaving containers, allowing the vehicles to operate stably. Hyundai Wia is also developing autonomous parking robots and logistics transport robots for factories.

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We considered changes in the height of the cargo bed when trucks are loaded and unloaded, as well as the slopes that occur when entering and leaving containers, and developed the system to operate stably.