Wheel Lifting and Transporting Robot for Heavy-duty Vehicles

I&T Wish Wheel Lifting and Transporting Robot for Heavy-duty Vehicles
(REF: W-0610)
Matched I&T Solution
Trial Project
Summary and Challenges Background: Wheel (tyres with rims) replacement on our Refused Collection Vehicle Team is a daily task and labour intensive. This requires transporting new and old wheels (i.e. each wheel weighs around 80 to 110kg with diameter of 22.5 inches) between tyre storage areas to vehicle maintenance bays within indoor workshop. Also, wheel logistics to support various vehicle depots are often required (Delivering and receiving wheels within depots).
  1. Occupational Health and Safety, OHS (Involved high risk of physical injuries)
    • It requires manually handling for each staff to handle these heavy wheels one by one slowly and needs two staffs to ensure each wheel can be transported safely.
    • It is more hazardous and difficult to transport damaged or flat wheels. Exposed tyre steel belts, chemicals/sludge, bent rims from damaged rims cause additional safety risks on hand injuries.
  2. Working Efficiency It requires significant time to replace a complete 6-wheel to 10-wheel sets by transporting existing wheels to storage and taking new wheels to maintenance bays (means transporting 12 to 20 times for each wheel replacement).
Expected Outcome We want to increase OHS and working efficiency of this task. New Innovative Approach or Retrofitting Design on Existing/Market available Device are both welcome to address the aforementioned challenges. By implementing a robot or similar device (thereafter called “the Robot”) with sufficient safe fixtures for heavy wheels, to fix, transport, lift the wheels for wheel replacement and wheel logistics between vehicle depots respectively.

Major operations (to improve aforementioned OH&S and operating efficiency):
  1. Attach/detach wheels to/from the Robot (between storage areas & work bays)
  2. Transporting wheels by the Robot within workshop
  3. Lift up/unload wheels on vans/trucks by the Robot Mandatory


Functions for the Robot:
  1. The Robot must be straightforward and easy to operate.
  2. The Robot must support remote-control and manually movable-by-staff operation as back-up mode.
  3. The Robot can transport one or preferably two wheels (for further enhancing efficiency) each travelling between storage and maintenance bays.
  4. The Robot can lift up wheels to a level of no more than 85cm for lifting up and down the wheels into and out of light goods vehicles respectively.
  5. The Robot should be compact enough to go through a pathway with width of 1.35m.
  6. The Robot should have sufficient emergency features to avoid any unexpected obstacles and blockage. Emergency plan and procedures must be provided by the vendor in case of any faults and emergent circumstances.
Expected Trial Duration 9-month
Contact Information
I&T Wish Proposer:Electrical and Mechanical Services Department (EMSD)
Contact Person:LAI Chi Keung Eric
Position:Project Officer/Innovation/22
Tel:31672878
Email: cklai@emsd.gov.hk
Upload Date 2026-08-06
Closing Date 2026-08-20
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