Smart hands, warehouse sorting give glimpse of the future
Imagine a robot hand that is sensitive enough to hold an egg without breaking it. Or a warehouse that can sort and deliver packages on its own. These are just a few of the amazing developments that are coming out of the Beijing Economic and Technological Development Area (BDA).
Soft and flexible hands
The robot hand developed by SRT can grasp a raw egg and separate its yolk from the egg white. [Photo/kfqgw.beijing.gov.cn]
This special hand can grasp electronic parts, high-value medical consumables, and other fragile items without damaging them. It can be used to sort and package fragile and special-shaped items. The hand was independently developed by Soft Robot Tech (SRT) in the BDA.
According to International Federation of Robotics (IFR) data, about 96 percent of the world's fragile and special-shaped goods are still loaded and unloaded manually.
To solve this problem, SRT established the Materials Science Laboratory and the Structural Science Laboratory. In this lab, the whole process of design, manufacture and related control technology has been realized, and the technical problems of the use accuracy and life of silica gel have been successfully solved.
Intelligent sorting
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Finance, and the State Administration for Market Regulation recently announced the 2021 Smart Manufacturing Demonstration Factory list and a list of excellent scenarios.
Among them, JD Logistics, a BDA enterprise, was selected as an excellent scenario of intelligent manufacturing in 2021. The specific example from JD Logistics is its intelligent warehousing and distribution.
The company's Asia No. 1 park is a modern intelligent logistics park with the largest building scale and the highest degree of automation in Asia.
It uses automated equipment, robots, and intelligent management systems on a large scale to accomplish three-dimensional storage, picking, packaging, and sorting to reduce costs and improve efficiency.
There are currently 43 Asia No. 1 parks in China, forming an operational network and technical capabilities that support warehousing and logistics in the intelligent manufacturing industry chain.
JD Asia No.1 Beijing Logistics Park [Photo/kfqgw.beijing.gov.cn]