Tech Briefs Magazine - June 2024 - MD16

Remote Robot Monitoring and Error Recovery Boosts
Integrator Capacity, Slashes Downtime
W
hen a robot cell experiences unplanned
downtime, John Bridgen's
first priority as Director of Customer
Satisfaction at Precision Cobotics, an integration
firm based in Eastern Pennsylvania,
is finding out exactly what happened.
Traditionally, this " root cause analysis "
and subsequent debugging has required
onsite visits and, at least initially,
a degree of guesswork. Precision
Cobotics' customers are extremely sensitive
to the costs of downtime and for
some, every hour of unplanned downtime
can cause losses in the tens of
thousands of dollars.
" You buy robots so you can save labor
and this means being able to run them
unattended. However, when the automation
doesn't work, this also means
that no one is around to do forensic
studies on why it stopped working, " explained
Bridgen.
For the customer, the traditional
approach means time spent waiting to
get access to an expert. For integrators,
it creates additional travel costs,
time-consuming guesswork, and limits
their ability to take on out-of-state
business.
For Precision Cobotics and its customers,
however, those days are long gone.
By deploying the Olis solution for
remote robot monitoring and error recovery
in its customers' robot cells, the
Precision Cobotics team is able to determine
the cause of the robot downtime
faster than ever before, perform
remote debugging and error recovery,
and grow its business in new regions.
" In all of our deployments, Olis shortens
the time it takes to figure out the root
cause of robot failures so we can get production
up and running again. It is so important
to get that kind of forensic video
evidence quickly whenever there is unplanned
downtime, " said Bridgen.
Olis consists of several Power-overEthernet
(PoE) cameras, a compute box
hosted onsite, and sophisticated software.
The system provides 24/7 low latency
video and data access to any robot
cell, enabling integrators to perform
immediate root cause analysis.
One of Precision Cobotics' customers
is a foundry that uses a UR20 from
Universal Robots on a complex bin-picking
and machine tending application involving
a 4D vision software from Apera
AI, and a Doosan Puma CNC machine.
The robot was required to pick from
two wire mesh bins at least three feet
deep and full of parts. Then, using a
dual-gripper, it would orient the part
precisely in the CNC machine, collect
the part when finished and place it
onto a conveyor for packaging.
Despite the complex application requirements,
the cell worked smoothly.
But then Precision Cobotics received
an alert via Olis that the robot had
reached a protective stop. Onsite, people
were scratching their heads and
making guesses at the cause of the
robot downtime. It was a different story
at Precision Cobotics.
Olis provides remote monitoring and error correction for both legacy and new industrial robot cells. (Image: Precision Cobotics)
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Motion Design, June 2024

Tech Briefs Magazine - June 2024

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