Clearing Misconceptions and Achieving Sustainable Development Goals with Automation in Logistics
The United Nations developed 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in the assault of a series of problem seen globally. The problems—ranging from ending poverty and improving health, to improving education and economic growth, aim to be tackled while fighting climate change. When looking at climate change, one significant contributor to global emissions is the logistics industry. According to reports, the transport and logistics sector accounts to about a quarter (24%) of all global carbon emissions. The alarmingly high value is only set to increase, with the European Environmental Agency predicting that global logistics will cause 40% of global carbon emissions come 2050, if no measures are put in place. In working towards achieving the SDGs set by the UN, automation might not be the first ally many in the logistics sector would think of when “going green”. The Misconception of Automation Big, power-hungry industrial robots are what most would associate industrial automation with. Those robots unsurprisingly consume loads of energy, thus not aiding the logistics sector with achieving their SDGs. However, recent developments in automation have allowed for sustainable solutions to be used within the sector. Take AutoStore’s R5 robot for example. These little robots are busy workers aiding human workers with storage and retrieval within warehouses. Despite this, ten of these robots use approximately the same amount of energy as a single vacuum cleaner operating for the same amount of time. Other innovations within the space allow these robots to not only recharge themselves at the right time to avoid excessive charging, but also have regenerative energy functions to recharge their batteries whenever they store/retrieve or reduce speed. In totality, they only consume 100 Watts of energy during operation, allowing businesses within the logistics sector to reduce their […]