Toyota Introduces AGVs for Handling Cargo Containers

Automated Guided Vehicles, which essentially are driverless heavy equipment vehicles, have been sold by Toyota to Japanese cargo handling companies for many years, but now the company wants to offer the vehicles in the US, according to news reports. The decision was made to offer the vehicles to US markets after Toyota determined that port operators here will need greater efficiency in port logistics in the coming years, according to Kenichi Ito, Toyota’s chief of port business development. The first robot cargo container handling vehicles were used in 2008 at Tobishima Container Berth, in Japan’s Port of Nagoya, which is Asia’s only fully automated container terminal. The shipyard now has 33 AGVs in operation.