Published on: March 17, 2025 / Updated on: March 17, 2025 – Author: Konrad Wolfenstein
AI-controlled industrial trucks and their digital twin – A milestone in warehouse automation – Image: Xpert.Digital
Digital twins and AI: How KION is transforming supply chains
KION Group presents impressive physical AI solution at LogiMAT 2025
The presentation of the physical, AI-powered Omniverse solution by the KION Group in collaboration with NVIDIA and Accenture marks a significant advancement in industrial automation. At LogiMAT 2025 in Stuttgart, the company impressively demonstrated how AI-controlled industrial trucks, in conjunction with digital twins, can revolutionize efficiency, adaptability, and cost-effectiveness in supply chains. The fully integrated goods receiving solution, featuring autonomous mobile robots and manual forklifts, both equipped with AI, showcases the enormous potential of this technology for the future of intralogistics.
The strategic collaboration between KION, NVIDIA and Accenture
KION presents a solution with physical AI at LogiMAT in Stuttgart – Image: KION Group
The solution presented at LogiMAT is the first result of the large-scale collaboration between KION, NVIDIA, and Accenture, announced in January 2025, to redesign industrial automation. This partnership combines the expertise of three leading companies in their respective fields: KION as a provider of industrial trucks and supply chain solutions, NVIDIA as a market leader in artificial intelligence, and Accenture as an expert in digital transformation.
Rob Smith, CEO of KION GROUP AG, emphasized the strategic importance of the collaboration with NVIDIA and Accenture. NVIDIA's leading position in artificial intelligence and Accenture's expertise in digital technologies will reshape warehouse automation. The combination of these strong partners enables a vision for future warehouses that function as part of an intelligent, agile system, continuously evolving with their environment and capable of handling virtually any challenge in the supply chain.
The three companies are using physical AI with intelligent stationary cameras, autonomous forklifts and state-of-the-art automation and robotics solutions to create highly realistic real-time digital twins in NVIDIA's Omniverse, fed by live sensor and camera data.
Suitable for:
The physical AI solution: Integration of the real and virtual worlds
At LogiMAT, KION subsidiary Linde Material Handling presented a fully integrated goods receiving solution featuring an autonomous mobile robot (AMR) and a manual forklift, both equipped with AI. This solution demonstrates the practical application of so-called “physical AI”—AI models that embody the principles and properties of the physical world.
The presented solution is digitally represented in NVIDIA's Omniverse and demonstrates the real-time localization of the industrial trucks. The onboard and stationary cameras run on NVIDIA hardware and capture and process live operational data. Particularly noteworthy is that the entire solution operates within a constantly evolving simulation environment designed to optimize vehicle coordination and route planning at scale.
In addition, the vehicles feature apps that offer continuous software upgrades for functions such as improved pedestrian detection and obstacle avoidance. This underscores the dynamic and adaptable nature of the solution, which can continuously improve and adjust to new requirements.
Digital twins: The heart of the new technology
A key element of the presented solution is the concept of the digital twin – a virtual replica of a physical warehouse that replicates its properties and behavior. This technology offers an efficient method for planning, validating, and optimizing warehouse automation, ensuring smooth implementation and long-term reliability.
The process begins with a digital replica of the Warehouse Control System (WCS), which serves as a test environment to evaluate system throughput, the messaging capabilities of the Warehouse Management System (WMS), and overall system behavior long before installation. According to Ron Winkler, Managing Director of the Digital Business Unit at Linde MH, configuring a digital warehouse twin allows for the simulation and efficiency testing of any conceivable infrastructure and fleet configuration in 3D. This enables continuous training and improvement of the AI, creating a warehouse ecosystem that proactively addresses challenges and constantly evolves.
The digital visualization in NVIDIA's Omniverse allows for the exploration of countless scenarios to define the ideal warehouse layout. This helps customers define ideal layouts for new warehouses and improve warehouse management by predicting peak loads, ensuring worker safety, and planning resources more effectively.
Suitable for:
The technical implementation: Intelligent cameras and real-time localization
A key component of the presented solution is the real-time localization of industrial trucks. Linde Material Handling is currently developing a real-time localization system that works both inside and outside the warehouse. It enables seamless tracking of each vehicle's location using innovative, low-infrastructure ultra-wideband technology.
Intelligent camera systems, strategically installed throughout the warehouse infrastructure and on both manual and automated vehicles, are used to track load carriers, AMRs, and manual vehicles. They also provide real-time monitoring of loading and storage areas. The images captured by these systems are then directly interpreted and processed by AI.
This is demonstrated practically in the showcase at Linde's booth: A forklift operator transports goods to the receiving area using an electric Linde forklift. In the designated transfer area, a fully automated Linde pallet stacker then takes over the pallet for further transport into the warehouse. The manual forklift's intelligent camera automatically captures an image of the load and saves it to the system. Simultaneously, the camera records the entire surroundings, identifies people and obstacles, and immediately adjusts the vehicle's behavior to the situation.
Benefits for customers: efficiency, cost savings and adaptability
KION Group's physical AI solution offers numerous advantages for its customers. Conditions in global trade, supply, and logistics centers are constantly changing, and KION uses physical AI to design, simulate, and optimize real-world options in its customers' supply chains. Digital twins play a crucial role in this process: they operate in real time, acting as a control tower and simultaneously serving as a template for the physical systems. This enables significant savings in time, investment, and operating costs, allowing customers to flexibly adapt their processes to changes in the supply chains.
Operators of large fleets, in particular, benefit from this development. The combination of intelligent hardware and software with high computing power creates maximum transparency across all warehouse processes, while continuous simulations make order processing more efficient and reliable. Advances such as machine learning and neural networks further increase warehouse efficiency, boost throughput, and enable the optimization of both manual and automated fleets. This allows for more efficient deployment of personnel, ultimately resulting in significant cost savings for companies.
The future of warehouse automation: Continuous innovation
The solution presented here is just the beginning of a continuous development in the field of warehouse automation through AI. As the complexity of warehouse operations increases, optimizing routes and coordinating manual and automated material handling equipment places significantly higher demands on computing power.
When coordinating 100 or more vehicles, advanced intelligence and powerful hardware are essential for efficiently processing the vast amounts of data. This is precisely where the AI of the NVIDIA Omniverse platform comes into play. It creates a digital twin of the warehouse, an exact virtual replica of the physical environment. Simulations can then be run within seconds on this digital model, whether for optimizing routes and coordination between autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) and manual forklifts, or for improving existing warehouse layouts.
As a technology and innovation leader in the industry, Linde Material Handling is at the forefront of developing AI-based solutions. These solutions represent a significant breakthrough, aiming to improve customers' competitiveness and ensure the long-term efficiency of their material flows.
Further development in supply chain optimization
The physical AI solution presented by the KION Group at LogiMAT 2025, in collaboration with NVIDIA and Accenture, marks a turning point in warehouse automation and supply chain optimization. The seamless integration of AI-controlled industrial trucks and digital twins makes warehouse operations more efficient, adaptable, and cost-effective.
The combination of physical AI, real-time localization, and digital twins enables customers to continuously optimize their warehouse processes and quickly adapt to changing conditions. This not only leads to significant cost and time savings but also improves the safety and reliability of warehouse operations.
With this groundbreaking technology, the KION Group underscores its position as an innovation leader in intralogistics and paves the way for a new era of warehouse automation. The collaboration with NVIDIA and Accenture demonstrates how cross-industry partnerships can lead to disruptive solutions that transform entire sectors.
Suitable for:
Your global marketing and business development partner
☑️ Our business language is English or German
☑️ NEW: Correspondence in your national language!
Konrad Wolfenstein
I would be happy to serve you and my team as a personal advisor.
You can contact me by filling out the contact form or simply call me on +49 89 89 674 804 (Munich) . My email address is: wolfenstein ∂ xpert.digital
I'm looking forward to our joint project.
