Hyster-Yale Group has entered into a preferred vendor cooperation agreement with robotics specialist Balyo Inc. to market self-guided trucks in North America. Through this agreement, Hyster-Yale Group, the manufacturer of Hyster® and Yale® lift trucks, will broaden its capabilities by offering robotic high-productivity solutions for the materials handling industry, while Balyo aims to accelerate adoption of its innovative robotic solutions.

The Balyo technology enables trucks to navigate without the help of any reflectors, wires or magnets. Instead the technology selects structural elements of the facility to build a map. Once the map is created, each self-guided truck compares, in real time, what its navigation module sees against the stored map, allowing the truck to self-locate, and move along its intended path.