This Automated Shelf Storage System Prevents Frustration and Back Pain

If you’re anything like me, you have a wall in your garage dedicated to shelves that contain heavy duty storage totes. That setup is space-efficient, but definitely not time-efficient. Every time you need to access a tote, you have to sacrifice time and the integrity of your lower back. But Alex is smarter than you and I, which is why he built this bin-credible automated shelf storage system.

Systems like this exist on the commercial market, as they have very obvious practical benefits. But those are meant for serious retail and warehouse settings, which means they’re very expensive. So expensive that peasants like us could never justify the cost just to streamline operations in our home garages.

Alex’s system is pretty much the same as those on a conceptual level and it even features a kind of inventory management computer. But it is far, far more affordable.

The storage rack itself is mostly wood, but there are plastic and steel parts where necessary. Then there is a bunch of steel and UHMW plastic making up the robotic system that attaches to the storage rack and that does all the magic. That is a kind of gantry system, but turned on its side so the carriage can move to any tote position on the storage rack. A large counterweight helps with vertical movement — assistance that is especially important once the robot grabs a tote.

This is a three-axis system: left/right, up/down, and in/out. The motion system components all came from StepperOnline and they consist of huge servo motors, 5:1 planetary gearboxes, and even an electric brake.

Those servos operate under the control of a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B single-board computer, with a touchscreen for the user interface. The servos have built-in drivers that accept input directly from the Pi’s GPIO pins.

The user interface as it exists now is pretty utilitarian, with a button for each tote. Pressing the button tells the robot to retrieve that tote or return it to its home. But Alex has plans to show expanded capability in a future video, which will have AI-enabled behavior. That will let Alex say something like “bring me my gloves” and the system will automatically grab the tote containing the gloves.

I’m sure that, like me, you’re drooling over this and wish you had it in your own garage.