97 pick and place their goods onto whatever transport mechanism the system entails, so provide some ergonomic relief, but they’re not true end-to-end autonomous solutions,” says Magnus Eldevik, product marketing manager at Magazino. “We wanted to make something that could fulfil end-to-end automation of material supply inside factories – so comprehensive in how it tackled just-intime deliveries from automated storage spaces to assembly lines that you could completely reorientate your human beings towards other tasks, and give them complete ergonomic relief from material-handling work.” While the cuboid Magazino SOTO is physically imposing, at roughly 2160 mm tall and 2146 mm long, its 1060 mm width means that walkways of just 1.65 m are wide enough for it to move and turn freely, including among people. Designed to be as large as is feasible to maximise transport capacity and minimise the number of models needed for timely material handling, SOTO’s internal dimensions enable it to carry up to eight 600 x 400 mm Euro containers (VDA 4500 standard industrial stacking boxes that are 280 mm tall – also called Euroboxes, KLTs from the German word KleinLadungsTräger or SLCs, meaning “standard loading containers”) full of small parts, or up to 24 Euro containers measuring either 300 x 200 mm or 400 x 300 mm. “We’d previously made and successfully sold our TORU UGV, which is smaller than SOTO and aimed at carrying shoeboxes for the fashion industry. But, for SOTO, we’d need to add mechanisms that could interact with both conveyors and shelves,” Eldevik recounts. “Factories don’t want to add significant modifications to their production environments, so as well as minimising traffic, SOTO would add to factory floors by handling many KLTs per run. Its gripper mechanism lets it grab SLCs from shelves or flow racks, stow them in its ‘backpack’ and place them into flow racks conveying into assembly lines for personnel or machines to then use in the production process. “SOTO interacts with inexpensive flow racks made out of plastic or metal. That keeps things simple and scalable, and it’s especially useful for companies that injection-mould parts, because SOTO can swap KLTs in and out of the injectionmoulding machines exactly in time with their output cycle times.” Just as Euro containers were originally standardised for the automotive industry, so is auto manufacturing a particular target application for SOTO. In early 2024, German multinational MAN Truck & Bus purchased 12 Magazino UGV factory logistics | In operation Uncrewed Systems Technology | December/January 2025 Magazino’s SOTO performs autonomous small-parts delivery from warehouse to production line, particularly in automotive factories (Images courtesy of Magazino) At a width of 1060 mm, walkways of 1.65 m are large enough for SOTO to move and turn freely among people
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