AI Vision Inspection Technology Booms in the Logistics Industry

In recent years, with the rise of Internet enterprises and the continuous improvement and development of logistics system, the housing economy and lazy economy have gradually matured under the stimulation of the short-term epidemic. China's online retail sales of physical goods grew steadily.

Development status and problems of logistics industry

The data show that in 2020, the online retail sales of physical goods reached 9759 billion yuan, an increase of 14.5%, accounting for 24.9% of the total social retail sales. With the transfer of offline consumption to online, the proportion of online retail sales in the total social retail sales continues to increase, and the penetration of online retail is further improved. 

China's express industry and e-commerce industry keep pace, and the accelerated development of e-commerce industry promotes the development of express industry. At the same time, China's logistics industry is not only the promoter of the vigorous development of e-commerce, but also its direct beneficiary.

According to the monitoring data of the State Post Office, 569 million express packages were received nationwide on November 1, a year-on-year increase of 28.54%. Guangdong and Zhejiang express received more than 100 million pieces. Another record high.

The essence of express logistics industry is to meet the needs of consumers for convenience, quickness and time saving. Affected by the epidemic situation and the sharp increase of online shopping volume and parcel volume, it also increases the pressure of logistics sorting. In addition, the huge number of return orders, followed by complicated operation procedures, low utilization rate of goods, large quantities of centralized return to warehouse, the difficulty of merging the same funds and putting them on the shelf in a timely and orderly manner, has indeed brought great difficulties and challenges to a series of logistics operations such as warehousing and distribution. So improving the speed and service attitude is the top priority of the logistics industry.

Intelligent application of logistics industry

According to the science and technology daily, the sorting robot can handle the work that originally took one or two hours for manual operation in 15 minutes, with an accuracy of 99.99%, and can still walk at the speed of 1.5m/s with a load of 1000kg. In addition, the sorting robot can maintain 24-hour uninterrupted sorting, reducing the amount of manual work by 70%.

Machine vision system is composed of image acquisition and perception, data processing and analysis and decision execution. It is an application system including algorithm, software and hardware.

The system converts the recognition target into image signal through visual perception equipment. After receiving the signal, the special image processing system converts the obtained morphological information into digital signal, then extracts the target features through various operations, and then controls the action of field equipment according to the discrimination results.

In the logistics sorting operation, the robot integrating machine vision technology can quickly classify and find the path according to the variety, material, weight and destination of goods through magnetic stripe guidance, laser guidance, UHF RFID guidance and machine vision identification technology, so as to realize unmanned operations such as loading, unloading and handling, and send the goods to the designated shelf or delivery platform, Greatly shorten the express delivery cycle and improve the service level.

The main applications of machine vision in storage include positioning, recognition, measurement, object sorting and video / monitoring analysis. Next, let's take a look at how machine vision technology plays a role in the logistics industry.

Loading and unloading

Automatic loading and unloading equipment such as full-automatic traveling crane and unmanned forklift carry out image acquisition by installing visual sensors. The image processing system carries out image processing and recognition for different types of objects, and establishes three-dimensional coordinates to quickly and accurately locate vehicles and goods to be loaded and unloaded, and provide operation information for equipment, so as to send goods to the designated shelf or delivery platform.

Carrying

With the popularization of automation equipment, warehouse handling equipment has become a very large application direction of modern science and technology. The machine vision navigation system enables unmanned forklift, AGV, AMR and other storage automatic handling equipment to carry out automatically and safely.

Pick

The manipulator picking system based on machine vision is composed of working platform, camera platform, controller, robot and other hardware and visual software. Without standardized placement of goods, the manipulator can automatically judge the location of materials, output the location information through a certain communication protocol, and automatically measure the appearance size of materials, Such as contour, aperture, height, area, etc., and guide the manipulator to grasp accurately.

Inventory

The visual sensor is used to image the goods in the warehouse, and the machine vision technology is used to accurately and quickly capture and analyze the two-dimensional code and image of materials, quickly determine the storage information such as material identity, quantity and warehouse, classify, compare and analyze the collected information, and automatically generate the material inventory report.

From the national level, the state attaches great importance to the development of the logistics industry and issues corresponding policies to promote the rapid development of the logistics industry. In the long run, in the next 5-10 years, intelligent sorting, intelligent sorting, intelligent handling and other systems will become the infrastructure of intelligent factory and intelligent storage. Facing the disruptive development and change of the logistics industry, enterprises focusing on AI vision should seize the opportunity, make use of advanced intelligent technology, turn subversion into opportunity, and contribute to the development of the logistics industry in the future.