World’s First Autonomous Carts Aimed at Factories and Logistics Launched

Canvas Technology has launched what it claims is the world’s first​ self-driving​ ​industrial​ ​cart. The company says the logistics robot brings driverless​ vehicles​ ​to​ workplaces​ “long​ before​ self-driving​ vehicles​ hit​ street”. Canvas says its carts are also the first self-driving vehicles to use 3D vision to map and navigate dynamic indoor workplaces. Canvas’ autonomous carts are simple but highly sophisticated autonomous transport vehicles designed to automate one of the most cumbersome, wasteful, and prolific human tasks in the workplace, moving materials from one place to another. Canvas thinks its machine is the only commercial self-driving vehicle capable of hands-off operations in highly changing and unstructured environments. By using cameras to map, localize and plan, it sees its environment in rich 3D world enabling intelligent and safe behaviour both indoors and outside, as well as GPS-denied environments. A wide variety of companies from ecommerce to manufacturing are looking for solutions to improve efficiency, speed and transparency especially in logistics both within factories themselves and wider logistic applications. We believe this sort of technology will be commonplace in factories soon.