Countdown on for warehouse drone launch

Geodis, Delta Drone say their product for automated inventory tracking will be operational by the end of the year.    The supply chain company Geodis and Delta Drone said their small drones will be operational in warehouses by the end of the year.
   Geodis and Delta Drone have been working on the project to use drones to automate inventory tracking inside warehouses for several years.
   As the drones move around the warehouse, they are accompanied by and tethered to a robot on the ground that provides them with power. The drones fly around warehouses at night or when workers are not present and read the bar codes on merchandise stored on shelves.
   “More than 1,000 flight hours in prototype mode across three pilot warehouses were required to arrive at this unique solution, which allows companies to perform completely automatic warehouse inventories without interrupting their usual operations or requiring any human intervention,” the companies said in a press release.
   “The main advantages of this solution are the productivity gains generated by performing the inventories outside warehouse operating hours, greater safety at work for the site’s employees, who no longer have to carry out this tedious and sometimes risky task and a greater reliability of the inventory.”
   The companies say they have developed a “plug-and-play” solution that easily can be moved from one warehouse to another without requiring any prior changes be made to the warehouse and that is adaptable to all types of warehouse management systems.