EAGLE – Innovatice technical solution for automated parcel unloading

Distribution centres (hubs) are essential parts within efficient logistics networks. To meet increasing demands concerning the flow of goods in urban and suburban areas, successfully operating distribution centres guarantee a sustainable mobility of goods. The unloading and infeed processes exert significant influence on the overall efficiency of distribution centres. State-of-the-art manual unloading of transport vehicles is a limiting factor in the process chain and decreases possible throughput rates of subsequent sorting processes. Especially in distribution centres of parcel services this bottleneck can be observed. Therefore, several attempts of automatizing the unloading process have been made, however, the requirements on such a system have hardly been met so far.
The project EAGLE copes with these problems by developing an automated unloading system which addresses actual and future demands on logistics networks in terms of high throughput rates, sustainability, cost-effectiveness and flexibility
The focus was lain on the following points: the capability of manipulating large amounts of parcels in a bulk
a reliable and fast identification of unsorted goods a flexible system adaptable to vehicles of different types and sizes
the compatibility to electric vehicles (energy consumption!