Towards the next level of intelligent automation
The German Otto Group, Hamburg, trading and servicing company with retail as its core business, and Nvidia Corporation, headquartered in Santa Clara, California, aka Silicon Valley, one of the world’s largest developers of graphics processors, announce their cooperation. The aim of the collaboration is to improve the intralogistics processes and supply-chain operations all together through intelligent robotics.
Otto Group expects to gain significant competitive advantages from its collaboration with the tech giant. As reported by the Hamburg headquarters, the project planning represents a comprehensive approach to train robots in a simulation environment for intelligent robotic automation, setting a new industry benchmark for improved efficiency of logistics operations, scalability and integration.
Setting a new industry benchmark
To this end, the Hermes Fulfilment logistics center in Loehne, Germany, is foreseen to serve as the first full-scale operational site and blueprint for further roll-outs, According to explanations given to the press, following this, Otto Group division One.O will develop the layer’s core, including its integration interfaces, and will assume governance of the solution.
Implementation of physics-based digital twins
Third – the executive partner in the alliance for implementing Otto Group’s trailblazer tech application with Reply spa is of European origin. The Turin-based Italian IT service provider with its network of global subsidiaries specializes in the development and introduction of processes based on new communication channels and digital media across numerous projects.
By creating physics-based digital twins of Otto Group’s existing distribution and fulfillment centers, the “magic” shall become reality: to simulate, train and deploy different kinds of robots including autonomous mobile and stationary robots significantly faster, enable seamless collaboration among robots across the logistic operations.
Creating a digital twin is more than just mapping a space – it’s about enabling intelligent orchestration at scale,” emphasizes Kai Uwe Ernst from Reply Germany to us. It’s the combination of Nvidia’s AI infrastructure together with Nvidia Omniverse libraries and Nvidia Isaac for AI Robotics along with Reply’s indeed impressive implementation expertise providing the potential for the creation of the targeted foundational infrastructure to begin with.
The overall goal: to entirely digitize and optimize supply chain operations and this adjustable to changing needs with regard to scale, peak management, and drastically improved overall efficiency.
To get there a „Robotic Coordination Layer“ shall connect robot fleets in the real warehouse to a digital twin – an exact virtual representation of the logistics centers. This digital twin will display the real-time locations and movements of all robots, using reality-capture techniques and advanced post-processing from sensors and cameras mounted. Enabling seamless, interactive control and management of operations – once established, the digital twin shall enable virtual reconfiguration of warehouse areas for process optimization and dynamic simulations.
About Nvidia
Nvidia Corporation is a US company and one of the largest developers of graphics processors. It is a global technology giant that develops graphics processing units (GPUs) for AI, gaming, and data centers. Their offerings cover chipsets for personal computers, servers, and game consoles. Headquartered at Santa Clara, California, the company held a share of over 80% of the discrete desktop graphics card market in the second quarter of 2022 – does not have its own manufacturing facilities and therefore operates according to the “fabless principle” [derived from English fabrication less = factory-free or without manufacturing, a business model that has spread since at least the 1990s in the context of globalization, the digital revolution, outsourcing, and offshoring, and is used in the global economy. [Source: Wikipedia].
The name of the company, which is undoubtedly one of the most valuable in the world and has seen a meteoric rise on the stock market, is derived from the Latin word invidia, meaning envy.
