AGILOX Services GmbH - Experts & Thought Leaders

AGILOX makes new top management appointments. Helmut Schmid takes over as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) in January 2022, as successor to the previous CEO, Franz Humer. Helmut Schmid will continue the AMR manufacturer’s ongoing strategy to expand its global market share. New appointments at AGILOX As the sole Managing Director of AGILOX, he also adds three new authorised signatories to the management team, Josef Baumann-Rott, Klaus Pucher and Robert Mayer. Helmut Schmid, who was the head of Germany and Western Europe at cobot market leader, Universal Robots, for many years, is now taking over as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of AGILOX. With Helmut Schmid, an internationally experienced Managing Director and Robotics Enthusiast, AGILOX is continuing on its path of further expansion. In his previous appointment, Helmut Schmid was Managing Director of the German cobot pioneer, Franka Emika GmbH, in Munich, Germany. Leadership change Helmut Schmid is a specialist in growth strategies, business development, change management, internationalisation, sales and marketing. In his long career, he has already founded several companies, managed them profitably and, in particular, implemented scalable business models, often developing new sales processes and structures, and implementing new go-to-market strategies in a targeted manner. AGILOX is a brand with a strong base and an equally high market potential" The graduate aircraft engineer has also made a name for himself as Co-Founder of the German Robotics Association and Robotics Ventures GmbH. Now, the new CEO of AGILOX wants to drive forward the company's further development and internationalise it. Helmut Schmid adds, “AGILOX is a brand with a strong base and an equally high market potential. I look forward to contributing my experience to the company in order to continue to develop it profitably and position it durably on the market.” Seamless transition “With his years of experience in the robotics environment, Helmut Schmid brings in-depth technical as well as management expertise, and now as CEO of AGILOX, can further develop the company from its excellent starting position and support our planned growth with the goal of becoming the world's leading AMR provider,” said Dr. Thorsten Dippel, the Managing Director of The Carlyle Group, which has been involved as key partner of AGILOX since June 2021. Daniel Haider, Managing Director of Raiffeisen Invest Holding GmbH & Co KG., likewise highlights the international industry experience of the new CEO, “We are very pleased that such a renowned expert in robotics is putting his trust in AGILOX. With Helmut Schmid as our new CEO, we are continuing the drive for dynamic growth at an international level.” Internationalisation and expansion of AGILOX’s headquarters The company’s previous Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Franz Humer, is also pleased with the new top manager. He said, “It was particularly important to us as founders that the new CEO continues AGILOX's successfully established strategy for the future, while furthering our brand DNA. In Helmut Schmid, AGILOX is getting a CEO, who will develop the company progressively and keep us on the right track for the future.” I am looking forward to continuing the good preparation work with the entire team" Helmut Schmid is also looking forward to the new challenge. He said, “I am looking forward to continuing the good preparation work with the entire team and from now on, become a contributor to the AGILOX success story. Internationalisation and the further expansion of the headquarters in Neukirchen, near Lambach, are just a few of the major topics I am looking forward to addressing.” Franz Humer is joining the Board of AGILOX as Executive Chairman and will prepare the company’s next strategic steps, notably in the area of product development and organisation in the USA. Dirk Erlacher is moving to China and will build up the Asian market from Shanghai. Intelligent automated guided vehicles Since 2009, AGILOX has stood for intelligent automated guided vehicles with added value that meet the highest quality criteria. The aim of the company, a specialist in intralogistics robots, is to enable customers to flexibly design their intralogistics with the help of its products. To do this it developed the industry’s most maneuverable pallet AMR, the AGILOX ONE. In 2021, the company added an autonomous counterbalanced forklift, AGILOX OCF to its product portfolio. The intralogistics robots are developed and produced exclusively at the company’s headquarters in Austria, which currently employs around 100 people.

After the “ONE” comes the “OCF”: AGILOX expands their line of intelligent guided vehicles by introducing a new autonomous omnidirectional counterbalanced forklift, operating with swarm intelligence. In doing so, AGILOX has entered a new area of ​​application: classic intralogistics in inbound/outbound warehousing and storage. With the ONE, AGILOX's ultralight, high-efficiency forklift product line, the company has reshaped the concept of AGVs. The fleets operate without a central control system, meaning the vehicles navigate the production facility or warehouse in a truly autonomous fashion. Counterbalanced forklift The AGILOX IGVs organise their routes according to the decentralised principles of swarm intelligence The exceptionally compact AGILOX IGVs organise their routes according to the decentralised principles of swarm intelligence, making them much more flexible than traditional AGVs. Additionally, programming or “teaching” the vehicles becomes significantly easier, while central software programs including maintenance, updates, etc. are rendered obsolete—an innovation that lowers operating costs. AGILOX is now expanding its range of IGVs to include the OCF—an abbreviation for “Omnidirectional Counterbalanced Forklift”. While the ONE is equipped with a scissor lift to function as a load handling device (and thus transports the load within the vehicle contour), the OCF is designed according to the principles of the counterbalanced forklift. Pick loads Hence, it can pick up pallets, lattice boxes, and other load carriers with a maximum weight of 1500 kgs (3300 lbs), transport them to the destination, and set them down at a height of up to 1600 mm (63 in). AGILOX’s intelligent and cost-saving IGV concept opens up new application areas. While the ONE vehicles are mainly used for material supply in production, the OCF enables classic intralogistics tasks in incoming and outgoing goods, order picking and storage, as well as in production—provided that the transport is pallet-bound. Omnidirectional drive concept The lithium-ion (LiFePO4) battery technology ensures short charging and long operating times Just like the ONE, the OCF uses an omnidirectional drive concept. It can therefore also drive sideways through narrow aisles, turn on the spot, and maneuver in the tightest of spaces. The same lithium-ion (LiFePO4) battery technology ensures short charging and long operating times - just three minutes of charging allows for up to one hour of operating time. The IGV fleets can be connected to customer software systems (LVR, ERP, WMS, MES, etc.) via an open API interface. An optional IO box enables the integration of external infrastructure, such as rolling gates and stationary conveyor systems, in the intelligent control system. An analytics module provides the user with all relevant operating data and KPIs. Series production Dipl.-Ing. (FH) Franz Humer, M.A. Co-Founder and CEO of AGILOX, notes “The OCF is a logical addition to round out our product portfolio. With it, we open up opportunities in storage and order picking technology, and thus, a large market in which the IGVs can showcase their advantages over both AGVs and man-operated forklifts.” The combined operation of the ONE and OCF in a “swarm” also provides a great advantage. For instance, while the smaller vehicles carry out delivery services to assembly workstations or tend to e-Kanban shelves, the OCF can, using the same control system and WiFi infrastructure, take over pallet transport. The OCF pilot series has already been successfully tested in Vorchdorf, Austria. Series production will begin shortly, with the first OCFs set to be delivered to customers in the first quarter of 2021.

Swarm Intelligence (SI) and bio-inspired computing have attracted great interest in almost every area of science and engineering, including robotics, over the last two decades. Being an innovative manufacturer of autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), AGILOX directs most of its effort into developing one of the most unique robotic material handling features on the market - completely decentralised autonomy. AGILOX Intelligent Guided Vehicles (IGVs) are completely independent, self-controlled, and intelligently designed to handle failover, recovery, and deadlock prevention perfectly. Providing real-time solutions Their SI system can provide real-time solutions to impossibly complex optimisation problems in the most efficient way possible, often in ways that a human designer could never anticipate. The swarm can also handle unexpected changes in dynamic environments without any human intervention. AGILOX vehicles automatically exchange information about the environment and the current work order situation with each other via WiFi several times per second. Based on virtual transport costs, which each participant constantly recalculates for all pending orders, it is automatically decided which vehicle fulfils an order and which path that vehicle can take to fulfil this order in the shortest amount of time. All of this is possible with almost no overhead cost to the end-customer. Expensive server systems The nature of the Swarm Intelligence also provides another massive advantage in terms of setup cost There are no expensive server systems, no wires added under the floor, no reflector or beacon installations - no hardware of any kind, other than your regular 2.4 or 5 GHz WiFi network and the charger. There is no software to install or maintain, no version numbers to keep up with, and no licenses with ongoing subscription fees. The nature of the Swarm Intelligence also provides another massive advantage in terms of setup cost. Once the first AGILOX unit learns its environment and workflow details, the system becomes immediately infinitely scalable. Adding additional vehicles to the swarm to increase throughput is as simple as turning on the power and assigning an IP address. Unrivalled collective intelligence Within minutes, the new vehicle will automatically download all of its configuration information from the swarm and begin working, no additional commissioning or programming required. AGILOX represents a total departure from the traditional approach to material handling processes. They apply the principles of the decentralised IGV system to their entire business model from top to bottom as well, by providing the customers with the training and tools to perform their own maintenance and expand or modify the system as they see fit. With open interfaces, infinite flexibility, and unrivalled collective intelligence, the possibilities for the AGILOX implementation are limited only by one’s imagination. Welcome to the future of logistics automation.