Third Wave Automation, the provider of autonomous high-reach forklifts, has officially announced commercial availability of its Armada Fleet Management System, which is the central interface for the company’s Shared Autonomy Platform. According to certain reports, Armada Fleet Management System comes decked up with an ability to help a single operator safely and effectively manage multiple TWA Reach and TWA Extended Reach forklifts at the same time. This translates to how operators can execute and monitor workflows, as well as configure warehouse zones dynamically. On top of that, they can also leverage the solution to integrate seamlessly with other warehouse management systems. In order to understand the significance of such a development, though, we must acknowledge how warehouse operators have been facing significant challenges with labor over the recent past. The cost of their challenge, although already pretty significant in its own right, becomes even greater once you consider that, all this time, the demand for their services has only grown bigger. A more concrete representation of the truth is rooted in the data made available by US Bureau of Labor Statistics. You see, the representation in question revealed that warehouse operators have seen their labor costs increase by more than 80% in the last five years. Making matters worse is the average staff turnover of around 30% on a monthly basis.

Fortunately, Third Wave Automation gets past that obstacle thanks to its Shared Autonomy platform, which leverages Armada FM to operate in four different modes i.e. fully autonomous, remote assist, remote operation and traditional manual operation. Talk about the benefits of this technology on a slightly deeper level, they begin from streamlined workflows. In essence, the solution achieves the same using ability to skillfully handle new and unique workflows, along with various racking configurations. Such ability, like you can guess, goes a long way to resolve any challenges the forklifts may encounter.

Next up, we must get into the product’s first-of-its-kind technology for improved visibility and collision avoidance. Here, you have the system leveraging obstacle detection systems, including lidar and camera feeds on the robotic forklifts, to help remote operators access insights into the location of potential barriers, Covering even those barriers that are not visible to the naked eye, the product helps you navigate around them rather effortlessly so to construst a better view of target pick and place locations than, let’s say, an operator would be able to achieve manually.

“Third Wave Automation is driving smarter automation in the warehouse with its AI-powered Shared Autonomy Platform. However, this would not be possible without an intelligent fleet management system that provides a powerful connection between remote operators and the autonomous forklifts on the warehouse floor,” said Arshan Poursohi, co-founder and CEO of Third Wave Automation. “Our Armada FMS is fundamental to achieving our customers’ performance goals, providing a single interface through which remote operators can monitor the forklift fleet performance on the warehouse floor.”

Another detail worth a mention here is rooted in the technology’s bid to enhance your responsiveness towards dynamic warehouse conditions. You see, with tools like on-the-fly region block, task prioritization and schedule management, the technology empowers you to accommodate various changes throughout the warehouse in real time. Finally, our last piece of highlight comes from the solution’s intuitive assist queuing capabilities that, on their part, can support multiple, efficient forklift paths to resolve operational issues, increase autonomy time, and improve throughput.