Driverless Transport System in Logistics
11.12.2025Hamilton relies on automation to increase efficiency – including in logistics, where a transport robot has recently been introduced.
Self-driving vehicles have been part of everyday life at Hamilton’s Domat/Ems site since 2018. On a rail network directly under the ceiling, transport robots (Smart Intralogistics at Hamilton – Hamilton Jobs) zip back and forth, moving smaller items such as semi-finished products or raw materials from the small-parts warehouse to production departments.
Not as fast, but bigger and stronger, is the driverless transport system from Agilox, which has been in operation since July 2025. It can transport Euro pallets weighing up to one ton from A to B. “Our employees quickly got used to this robot as well,” says Tanja Spadin, Project Manager responsible for introducing the system at Hamilton.
Spadin is particularly impressed by how easy the transport robot is to use:
“By the third day, it was already working productively. Operation is simple, and the automated system works independently.”
Ceiling sensors detect when a new pallet is ready at a pickup point and send this information to the FTS. Safety sensors on the FTS itself ensure there are no collisions. When the battery level is low, the device drives to the charging station on its own. After nine minutes, it is charged and ready to work for another three hours.
Today, the robot handles around two-thirds of all pallet transports – for example, from goods receipt to the high-bay warehouse.
“The robot drives to the pallets, loads them, moves to the high-bay warehouse, and places them on the conveyor belt. From there, the pallet is automatically stored.” This reduces the workload for employees, allowing them to focus on other tasks.
In the future, more tasks will follow. For example, the robot could prepare orders automatically. It could work at night so that pallets are ready for truck transport in the morning. Here too, the high-bay warehouse and the transport robot work hand in hand – without any manual intervention.
Facts and Figures:
- Start of operation: July 2025
- Max weight: 1 ton
- Max lift height: 50 cm
- Distance traveled: 1’324 km (861 hours of driving)
- Pallets transported: 10’462 (out of an average of 180 pallets per day, the FTS already moves 129)
- Total weight of all pallets: over 1’300 tons
- Operating time per battery charge: about 3 hours
- Charging time: 10 minutes
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