Overview

Sensor solutions for retail and warehousing
Challenges

Measurement
Light grids, LiDAR sensors, and camera systems as well as scales measure distances, overhangs, dimension profiles, packing volumes, and object weights. The information provided by these devices increases efficiency and process reliability, even for important storage and conveying tasks.

Identification
The automated identification of products is a key task in storage and conveyor applications. SICK has not only mastered all the main technologies in the field of automated identification, but also poses the right questions to ensure the right products for the task are selected from its technology portfolio (RFID, laser-based fixed mount bar code scanners, and image-based code readers).

Protection
SICK offers an extensive range of sensors, systems, solutions and services for ensuring safety requirements are met in compliance with applicable laws and standards. This portfolio ensures the efficient protection of hazardous areas, robots and mobile platforms, offering very high plant availability and high productivity.

Networking and integration
Quick and easy access to information and a consistent diagnostic concept are important strategic advantages. Our intelligent sensor solutions and safety controllers offer a variety of integration technologies, which provide access (from HMI, PLC and engineering tools) to the data supplied by our sensors.
Trends & news

Indoor and outdoor localization: Full transparency in the material flow
Logistics processes are becoming more complex every day. Transparency is therefore increasingly becoming a decisive requirement for raising the efficiency and productivity of logistical processes. Against the backdrop of transport processes in internal production, mounting and distribution logistics which are becoming steadily more flexible, modular and self-organizing, promptly answering the question of exactly where industrial trucks, transport aids and goods will be located at what time is essential. One option which has already been proven in practice: The localization and analysis technologies from SICK.
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Deep learning is the future of increasing efficiency
Machines are learning to think. Deep learning is a machine learning technique – and the most significant future technology in artificial intelligence. SICK transfers this key technology to its sensors, offering customers added value for greater productivity and flexibility.
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Sensors control the collaborative robots of the future
The ongoing development of small, powerful and flexibly positionable robots that can collaborate with humans is progressing in leaps and bounds. The sensors from SICK are an important component in this. Sensor intelligence plays a vital role not only in orienting and positioning mobile cobots but also in reliably monitoring their surroundings. Lightweight cobots that are transported to their working position on automated guided vehicles and autonomously position themselves are the newest development in this area. These cobots are making fence-free and flexible work an increasingly standard feature in robotics and a new foundation for functional automation.
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Monitoring and evaluating data to make the right decisions
In high-volume distribution centers, sensors record and communicate large quantities of logistics data every day. The real challenge, however, lies in compiling and interpreting that data. SICK’s Package Analytics software aggregates this data to help you visualize all SICK sensor data so you can make timely and informed decisions for your logistics operations.
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