Sick AG was awarded the VDI Logistics Innovation Prize 2025 at the 32nd German Material Flow Congress in Garching for its robot guidance system „PALlet content LOCalisation“ (Palloc).
Palloc is an AI-supported, adaptive localisation solution for automatic depalletising with robots. It combines a powerful 3D snapshot camera with a factory pre-installed and customised localisation system. pre-trained neural network and a new deep learning-based localisation algorithm. The system offers the possibility of localising almost unlimited variants of stacked cartons on pallets and provides position coordinates for reliable and safe robot operation. The integrated neural network already includes a large number of different carton types and can be expanded as required. New carton variants can be added at any time via a user-friendly AI tool suite.
Automated palletising solutions are implemented to ensure the smooth transfer of goods from delivery to dispatch or further processing - whether manual, conventional or robot-assisted. It is not uncommon for several solutions to be considered. The following play a key role Robot guidance systems in conjunction with smart camera systems, AI and deep learning functions, which can speed up logistics and production processes on the one hand and significantly reduce the monotonous workload for employees on the other.
Future-proof robot guidance system
With its combined 3D stereo and colour image capture and its browser-based user interface, Palloc is the ideal solution for one of the most future-proof robot guidance systems on the market. The following features also convinced the jury of the VDI Logistics Innovation Award:
- The SensorApp is integrated directly into the camera's neural network.
- The smart stand-alone system can be seamlessly integrated into the control system of any industrial robot and cobot manufacturer via Ethernet TCP/IP.
- Almost unlimited variants of stacked cartons on pallets can be localised.
- This provides the position coordinates of each carton for reliable and safe robot operation.
- The system solution's 3D snapshot camera can be flexibly mounted on the robot gripper or above the detection area - this ensures optimum detection of the smallest features, regardless of the height of the top layer of the cartons to be picked. It delivers up to 30 full-screen colour images and 3D image pairs per second in high resolution.
- The 3D values, which are automatically offset against the contrast values of the colour data, ensure that the contours, edges and layer heights of packages are recorded and measured very precisely and reproducibly.
- The pre-installed neural network has already been trained at the factory with a variety of carton types of different sizes, colours, designs and printing.
- New carton variants can be added at any time using SICK's user-friendly AI tool suite (e.g. the SICK dStudio web service for training neural networks).
The „Logistics Innovation Award“ is presented annually organised and awarded by the VDI Society for Production and Logistics (VDI-GPL). Each year, the prize is awarded to a company that has made an outstanding contribution to innovation in logistics. The winner is selected by an independent jury of competent and recognised experts.
Source: VDI
