LEVALLOIS-PERRET, France: April 11, 2018. Geodis will be introducing drone-based, autonomous warehouse inventory management by the end of 2018 after two years of development with Lyon, France-based supplier Delta Drone.

Designed by Geodis and Delta Drone engineers, the solution combines a ground-based, battery-powered robot to navigate a warehouse and a quadcopter drone equipped with four high-definition cameras that compensate for reflective glare from pallets covered with plastic sheeting.

With the addition of indoor geolocation technology, the drone and robot combination will operate outside normal working hours to manage warehouse inventory without human intervention at reliability rates “close to 100 percent”, according to the two companies.

The test phase ended last year with the development of a complete “plug and play” solution that can be easily moved from one warehouse to another and adapted to any Warehouse Management System (WMS).

Last year Geodis produced revenue of €8.1 billion from supply chain management and logistics services in 67 countries and a global network spanning 120.