How are Fleet Management Systems implemented in different robotic companies?

Find out the significance of FMS and how the implementation of FMS differs from one company to another.

Several manufacturing companies have begun to tap into the potentiality of mobile robots in order to incorporate automation into their processes. To manage and control multiple robots operating within the units, Fleet Management System (FMS) is implemented. FMS enables the complete and centralized management of the robot fleet, allowing the users or operators to manage the different mobile robotics systems from various devices through standard communication protocols. The robots can be accessed from any location (office, warehouse, home, etc.) and through any device (mobile phone, tablet, laptop, etc.). It helps to eliminate bottlenecks and downtime with around the clock mobile robot operation throughout the facility.

The Fleet Management System (FMS) includes:

• Graphical User Interface.
• A scheduler to plan missions.
• Management and assignment of tasks.
• Route planning.
• Fleet monitoring (location of each robot, status, battery level, mission in progress, etc.).
• Monitoring of events and alarms- both the robots and the controllers that manage the communication with elevators, doors, and loading/unloading docks.

The standard operation of a robot fleet in logistic centers requires the periodic execution of transport operations. These are defined within the FMS as “missions” and are managed within a dynamic database which is remotely accessible. FMS offers a superior layer of abstraction which enables interaction with the entire fleet of robots as if it were a single system. Different levels of access can be defined, so it is possible to specify typologies of users, each of which will have certain privileges to interact with the system.

Read on to find how fleet management systems are implemented by a few of the robotic companies

1. MiR Robots

MiR’s fleet management software, MiR Fleet, offers intuitive programming and monitoring via a web interface. It assigns priorities and coordinates takes to multiple robots. The tasks are distributed among the mobile robots, in such a way that the robot that can carry out the task in the shortest time is chosen, and it also ensures that the mobile robots automatically move to a charging station and charge up between tasks, minimizing the downtime. It supports differentiated access levels for users.

MiR Fleet can also control the robots’ traffic patterns by coordinating critical zones with multiple robot intersections. It is coupled with strategically placed cameras that function as an extended set of sensors. New advanced learning algorithms are implemented in the robot’s software as well as in remote, connected cameras that can be mounted in high-traffic areas or in the paths of fork trucks or other automated vehicles. The cameras are equipped with small, efficient embedded computers that can process anonymized data and run sophisticated analysis software to identify whether objects in the area are humans, forklifts, or other mobile devices, such as autonomous guided vehicles. The cameras then feed this information to the robot, improving the robot’s understanding of its surroundings so it can adjust its behavior appropriately, even before it enters an area. The AI-capable network helps the robot avoid high-traffic areas during specific times, such as when goods are regularly delivered and transferred by fork truck, or when huge crowds of workers are present, such as during breaks or shift changes.

2. AWS RoboMaker

AWS RoboMaker Fleet Management uses AWS IoT Greengrass to deploy an application to a robot in a fleet. After the user creates a deployment job, identifying the application that is to be deployed, RoboMaker Fleet Management will begin to deploy that application to all robots in the fleet. Once a deployment job has started, the conditional script will be run to verify the status of the robot. A deployment message is published to the IoT Topic. Since the user’s application subscribes to the same topic in the IoT message broker, they get a notification identifying the robot that is receiving the deployment. In the sample external application process, the user can decide whether to continue the robot deployment. If the user approves the deployment, the current ROS processes running in the robot will be terminated and AWS IoT Greengrass will download the application and then start the new application.

3. OTTO Motors

OTTO’s Fleet management software, Fleet Manager makes lights-out, 24×7 production possible.

(i) Traffic Control

Ensures that every OTTO robot moves safely and efficiently throughout the facility.

The factors responsible for traffic control are

• Dynamic Mapping

Continuous mapping offers the operators a real-time visual of the facility and the location of OTTO AMRs and the tasks they are performing.

• Automatic Traffic Enforcement

This allows the users to customize the way OTTO AMRs move throughout their facility by applying traffic rules like speed limits, heavy pedestrian areas, and more.

(ii) Job Supervision

Supervises the fleet constantly to ensure its efficient functioning.

• Intelligent Job Scheduling

Fleet Manager continuously processes data about the fleet, monitoring every robot’s status including charge level, location, job status, payload, vehicle capability, team, and more. Then, it intelligently assigns jobs like material pickups, drop-offs, and battery charging to the right robot in real-time.

(ii) Smart Notifications

Keeps the users up-to-date with important metrics to ensure mission-critical processes flow continuously.

• Notifies about job take times, throughput, distance traveled and more
• A single click connects the users to an OTTO agent for expert support
• Integrations with programs such as Slack allow for instant notification

(iii) Facility Integration

Facilitates flexible integrations, enabling enhanced productivity levels

• Powerful Analytics

Fleet Manager collects vast amounts of data and serves it up in a multitude of ways to help the users updated on the fleet performance and ROI.

Dashboards show vehicle status, jobs in progress, historical trends and more

• Flexible APIs and Integration

Easily connect OTTO Fleet Manager to any factory tools or systems in the facility, like ERP or WMS via HTTPS Rest and Websocket, OPC-UA Protocols, and Ignition for PLC integration.

Works collaboratively with cobots and other connected devices like conveyors and shelving for smooth, uninterrupted material handling.

4. Formant

Formant rolled out its cloud-based robot fleet monitoring platform, which enables businesses to automatically collect and analyze robotics data. The platform collects all application data on a single web UI, improving the efficiency of the fleet deployed by the companies. This platform is used by several clients in the robots-as-a-service (RaaS) space.

Functions of the platform:

· Observe: Monitor and visualize robot fleets historically and in real-time; identify the root causes easily

· Analyze: Automatically generate insights along any dimension of a fleet

· Operate: Collaborative, customizable robot tele-operations and fleet management

· Integrate: Connects a robot fleet to widely available cloud applications such as Slack and Tableau for communications; analytics tools such as Looker; and cloud data warehouses such as S3, Redshift, and Cloudsight

5. Freedom Robotics

Freedom Robotics’ micro-services-based platform, Freedom enables users to manage fleets of robots from smartphones, desktops, or via an API. Its transport protocol works with several mobile platforms, stationary robots, and autonomous vehicles and integrates into a single line of code. Users can work collaboratively with robots within Freedom and take direct control when issues arise or access a unified monitoring and logging dashboard that collates real-time streams, resources, and performance of all robots in the fleet.

Freedom automatically composes data per-fleet or per-robot and offers visualizations for 2D, 3D, lidar, odometry, and force metrics while highlighting things like service requirements and history. It can proactively detect issues, send alerts to relevant team members, and generate reports on demand. Admins and managers are allowed to replay robots’ actions to diagnose and debug problems, and they can optionally share their findings with an internal team or stream them to apps like Slack and PagerDuty.

6. Fetch Robotics

Fetch Robotics’ cloud-based fleet management software, FetchCore enables quick and efficient deployment of robot fleets. The software can build maps of a robot’s warehouse environment, modify tasks and schedules as workflows change, and monitor robot fleets in real-time. Its capabilities include providing data visualization to clients., checking inventory levels, and tracking traffic flows within a warehouse.

7. Addverb Technologies

Legion, Addverb technologies’ Fleet Management System, centrally manages the robot fleet end to end, enabling the users to perform the complete management of mobile robotics systems from different kinds of devices. It monitors and plans the movement of all the robots in the fleet.

Functions:

It monitors the location of each robot, status, battery level, mission in progress, etc. It also allocates the tasks to each robot as per the order quantity. Further, keeps track of the charging status of the robots and also sends alert to the mobile robots so they won’t collide.

Benefits:

• Route Planning- plans the optimal path for all the robots
• Realtime Tracking- tracks the location and details of each robot and helps in planning
• Configurable- the software can be configured as per the requirement such as email alerts, etc
• Advanced Analytics- shows the fleet analytics featuring information regarding robot productivity and usage

Addverb Technologies’ Legion

With the increasing need for automation in the intra-logistics sector, it is evident that the reliance on fleet management system would strengthen further in the coming years. The logistics companies must stay up-to-date with the emerging technologies and trends related to fleet management and keep tabs on their competitors so that they can upgrade their systems at the appropriate time.

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