Lloyd Shoes implements Magazino robots in warehouse

Robotics company Magazino has signed the shoe manufacturer and retailer Lloyd Shoes as a new customer, and will integrate its Toru robot into Lloyd Shoes’ operation.

From now on, the first two mobile picking robots from Magazino will be used in Lloyd’s dispatch warehouse in Sulingen, Germany. The Toru robots will support the employees in picking and stowing shoes in shelving racks.

With the use of intelligent picking robot Toru, Lloyd is one of the innovative pioneers in the industry.

The continuing growth in e‑commerce and ever smaller batch sizes require automation solutions that can be adapted flexibly and scaled as required. Additional Toru robots can be integrated into an existing fleet in less than half a day.

Stephan Wiegmann, responsible project manager at Lloyd, says: “We are convinced that Magazino robots are an important component for a flexible, scalable automation of our warehouse processes and help us to reflect the growth in e‑commerce and above all to support our employees.”

One of the key benefits of Toru is its ability to support human colleagues in their activities and the easy integration into the existing warehouse environment in Sulingen without any redesign of the warehouse itself.

This enables Toru to relieve employees of non-ergonomic tasks such as picking from the bottom or top shelf, or particularly long walking distances in the warehouse.

Thanks to numerous sensors, the Toru robot can perceive its environment, recognize people or obstacles in its path. This allows Toru to operate in a safe way in parallel with employees.

With up to 18 hours operating time, Toru can also work at night or outside core working hours.

After the delivery at the beginning of December 2019, the first two robots are now exploring their new working environment and are subject to a number of tests before being integrated into live operations.

Through a link to a global cloud and the use of artificial intelligence, Toru can constantly learn from its own experience in its daily work and share this knowledge with its robot colleagues. This makes all of the robots constantly faster and much more robust in unknown situations.

The Toru robots are already running at several customer sites in Germany and Europe. Among the users are the logistics service provider Fiege Logistics and the online platform Zalando.

Both have recently significantly increased their robot fleet.

In contrast to many other robotic solutions on the market, which either focused on static manipulation or transportation, Toru can pick individual items and transport them from A to B in the warehouse.

Covering both process steps, especially individual item picking within a vastly complex environment in live operation is revolutionary.