Spaniard shows the way with automated fork-lifts

Madrid

IN Burgos, a province in central Spain better known for archaeological digs and blood-sausages than for innovation, engineer Veronica Pascual is building automated vehicles. Not cars though, but fork-lifts, stackers and pallet trucks.

Ms Pascual, a 38-year-old aeronautical engineer, owns Asti (Automatismos y Sistemas de Transporte Interno), a company that produces so-called AGVs, or automated guided vehicles - mobile robots used in factories and warehouses that don't require human intervention to move.