Hyster-Yale to Market Self-Guided Lift Trucks with Balyo

Hyster-Yale Group has entered into a preferred vendor cooperation agreement with robotics specialist Balyo Inc. to market self-guided lift trucks in North America.

Michael Roth

Jan. 15, 2016

HysterYale Group will be developing selfguided forklift trucks with Balyo technology — Hyster-Yale Group will be developing self-guided forklift trucks with Balyo technology.

Hyster-Yale Group has entered into a preferred vendor cooperation agreement with robotics specialist Balyo Inc. to market self-guided lift trucks in North America. HYG, which manufactures 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 robotic solutions.

The Balyo technology enables trucks to navigate without the help of 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, what its navigation module sees against the stored map, allowing the truck to self-locate, and move along its intended path.

Balyo, based in Massachusetts, is a 100-percent owned subsidiary of Balyo SA, a French company based in Moissy-Cramayel, France. It specializes in the design, engineering and manufacturing of autonomous driving forklifts based on standard trucks.

About the Author

Michael Roth

Editor

Michael Roth has covered the equipment rental industry full time for RER since 1989 and has served as the magazine’s editor in chief since 1994. He has nearly 30 years experience as a professional journalist. Roth has visited hundreds of rental centers and industry manufacturers, written hundreds of feature stories for RER and thousands of news stories for the magazine and its electronic newsletter RER Reports. Roth has interviewed leading executives for most of the industry’s largest rental companies and manufacturers as well as hundreds of smaller independent companies. He has visited with and reported on rental companies and manufacturers in Europe, Central America and Asia as well as Mexico, Canada and the United States. Roth was co-founder of RER Reports, the industry’s first weekly newsletter, which began as a fax newsletter in 1996, and later became an online newsletter. Roth has spoken at conventions sponsored by the American Rental Association, Associated Equipment Distributors, California Rental Association and other industry events and has spoken before industry groups in several countries. He lives and works in Los Angeles when he’s not traveling to cover industry events.