Driving Forklifts in a Virtual Warehouse (With Robot Co-Workers)

Before the holidays kicked off, we packed our laptops, energy, and a whole lot of curiosity, and headed to Tampere Vocational College TREDU to run a Mixed Fleet project study with their logistics students. This wasn’t your regular classroom day. We brought with us a warehouse simulation we had designed and developed in Unity (yes, all the interaction magic was coded in C#). In the simulation, the students jumped into the role of forklift drivers and got to complete tasks while sharing the same environment with an Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV).

Basically, it was a sneak peek into what warehouses might look like in the near future, where humans and automation work side by side in so-called Mixed Fleet environments. The students really enjoyed the simulation. Many of them told us they could see it being a valuable training tool, something that could prepare future logistics workers for the kinds of changes coming into the industry. It wasn’t just about “playing” in a virtual warehouse; it was about experiencing what it actually feels like when a robot co-worker rolls into your work zone.

Read more on the Tampere University Computing Sciences blog here