GE Appliances Deploys Autonomous Truck

SELMER, TN—GE Appliances, a Haier company, is using an autonomous truck to deliver air conditioners and refrigerators from its assembly plant here to a nearby warehouse. Up to seven shuttle runs a day use Einride’s heavy-duty electric vehicle on public roads.

The autonomous freight pod made in Sweden features an aerodynamic design and an iconic shape. The 23-foot-long vehicle has a load capacity of 15 standard pallets or 20 tons. Its 200-kilowatt-hour battery enables the vehicle to drive up to 124 miles between charges.

“Our partnership with Einride in Selmer reflects our evolved approach to robotics and automation technology,” says Harry Chase, senior director of central materials at GE Appliances. “We are moving from implementing one-off solutions addressing various challenges to creating interoperability among systems that can build consistency and streamline processes in our factories and throughout our supply chain.

“This implementation is allowing our employees to focus on high-value tasks, reducing traffic in congested areas to create a safer work environment, and eliminating some of the most challenging ergonomic tasks like climbing on and off a forklift and hooking and unhooking trailers,” explains Chase. “We believe robotics and automation technology should work with and for people to improve their jobs.”

The Einride autonomous vehicle is part of a larger interoperability project in Selmer to create an automated logistics flow that improves employee ergonomics and safety around loading docks and increases efficiency. Additional GE Appliances partners include TaskWatch and Slip Robotics. TaskWatch’s AI cameras trigger a control board to raise and lower the dock doors, dock plate, lock the autonomous vehicle into place and notify the SlipBot autonomous mobile robot that the Einride vehicle is ready for loading. The electric-powered SlipBot then autonomously loads and unloads the vehicle, reducing loading times by 80 percent.

“We are very proud to partner with GE Appliances and be able to lead the industry in providing autonomous technology and deploying it in the strongest commercial use case today,” says Henrik Green, general manager of autonomous technologies at Einride.

Austin has been senior editor for ASSEMBLY Magazine since September 1999. He has more than 21 years of b-to-b publishing experience and has written about a wide variety of manufacturing and engineering topics. Austin is a graduate of the University of Michigan.

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