Cyngn today announced that its autonomous DriveMod Forklift has completed its first paid autonomous deployment at a customer facility. The Menlo Park, Calif.-based company said this marked a milestone in the commercialization of the next vehicle in its Enterprise Autonomy Suite, or EAS, portfolio.
DriveMod has built-in safety features including 360° high-definition perception and Cyngn’s Virtual Bumper technology. The system is designed to safely navigate dynamic environments while attaining high operational precision, said the company.
“The DriveMod Forklift represents the holy grail of automation,” stated Ben Landen, vice president of business development at Cyngn. “This is one of the few machines that can autonomously accomplish entire material moving flows, from A to Z, without requiring human intervention.”
“This means that the market for autonomous forklifts is among the largest in comparison to other material handling vehicles, and we’ve carved out a differentiated niche by targeting heavy loads on non-standard pallets,” he added. “This achievement allows us to validate and showcase the forklift’s capabilities in real-world, high-throughput settings that capture significant value for our customer.”
Cyngn offers fleet software with self-driving forklift
Cyngn claimed that its self-driving systems can help businesses address challenges including labor shortages, safety incidents, and increased consumer demand in e-commerce. The company‘s DriveMod kit can be installed on new industrial vehicles or via retrofit, allowing customers to adopt autonomous vehicle (AV) technology without high upfront costs or the need to replace existing investments.
Cyngn’s Enterprise Autonomy Suite includes DriveMod and the Cyngn Insight customer-facing suite of AV fleet management, teleoperation, and analytics tools. It also includes the Cyngn Evolve internal toolkit that enables the company to use data from the field for artificial intelligence, simulation, and modeling.
The self-driving forklift uses advanced AI and proprietary computer vision to analyze pallet stack and pocket dimensions in real time, enabling the precise handling of loads over 10,000 lb. (4,545 kg) and elevating productivity. Customers can control the DriveMod Forklift via Cyngn Insight for real-time vehicle monitoring, operational analytics, and centralized mission planning.
Last month, Cyngn said that its DriveMod Forklift could operate both indoors and outdoors.
DriveMod Forklift takes a step to market availability
While Cyngn declined to name the customer that has deployed DriveMod, it said the forklift demonstrated its ability to work at a large facility. The next steps for commercialization of the DriveMod Forklift include building and selling additional units in preparation for integration into this customer’s operations, which is targeted for the first half of 2025.
The use case followed successful development of the DriveMod Forklift. In the fall of 2022, Cyngn announced that it had signed a contract with a building materials manufacturer to begin development of the autonomous forklift.
By the summer of 2023, the company revealed the first footage of the autonomous forklift. It soon followed up with an announcement that the building manufacturer, Arauco, had pre-ordered 100 DriveMod Forklifts.
Last month, Cyngn announced that OEM partner Motrec had built its first 12,000-lb. DriveMod Tugger. Last week, the company said that a major automotive equipment manufacturer is among the customers using the DriveMod Tugger.
Cyngn also last week secured its 21st patent for a system and methods of adaptive object-based decision making for autonomous driving.
The DriveMod Forklift is now available for additional deployments on a select basis.
