Today’s busy warehouses must operate at peak efficiency 24/7 to keep up with growing fulfillment demands. That’s why many are turning to robotics and automation.
However, these productivity-, speed-, and accuracy-enhancing systems require continuous mobile connectivity to run effectively. If they lose communications even momentarily, they stop working—negating any efficiency gains.
Traditional Wi-Fi networks used in warehouses rely on fixed infrastructure, so they can’t maintain connectivity with automated and autonomous systems as they move around obstacles common on the warehouse floor—like metal racks and heavy equipment. Workers using handheld scanners and RFID wands also constantly traverse the warehouse and extending coverage to those devices can be difficult in the face of interference. Adding more costly network infrastructure is the only way to overcome signal blockage issues to keep device-equipped personnel and mobile robots connected between the racks unless your warehouse has Rajant Kinetic Mesh®.
Rajant’s industrial Wi-Fi network enables modern warehouses to become more autonomous because the network itself is intelligent and self-optimizing. Here’s how.
Rajant’s compact, lightweight BreadCrumb® nodes can be easily deployed on both fixed and moving assets like mobile robots. BreadCrumb-equipped systems can take connectivity with them wherever they roam, and link directly with each other to enable machine-to-machine communications. The ruggedized nodes also provide longer range than typical indoor Wi-Fi access points so you can support more applications using less fixed infrastructure—including handheld devices and additional Wi-Fi based IoT sensors.
Every BreadCrumb works peer-to-peer and can hold many connections over multiple frequencies simultaneously. Rajant’s InstaMesh® smart networking software orchestrates traffic among these meshed connections, dynamically selecting the fastest path for delivery. If a path becomes blocked or interference is sensed, InstaMesh will automatically route traffic via the next-best available path—maintaining mission-critical connectivity.
That means you can now maintain the ‘never-break’ wireless communications with all your mobile devices and systems—even in the hardest-to-network areas between the racks, without adding significant infrastructure. What’s more, with our multi-radio network you gain the high capacity to run other efficiency-transforming applications like live video streaming and telemetry for equipment health monitoring and predictive maintenance.
Modern warehouses need autonomy to augment worker productivity, optimize accuracy, automate difficult processes, and more. That’s why they need Rajant Kinetic Mesh—the autonomous network for industrial Wi-Fi that keeps automation and robotics platforms moving, along with your fulfillment efficiency
Click here to watch a video that illustrates how this is accomplished.