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OMRON Provides the First Mobile Robot Simulator for Factory and Manufacturing Applications

June 08, 2020 by Stephanie Leonida

Omron delivers its Fleet Simulator to the factory and manufacturing industry to provide optimum robot fleet management. 

During any factory or manufacturing process, managers need to ensure a seamless workflow for operations to run smoothly and maximum product output. Automated robotic fleets are fundamental to such processes, but there can be disruptions to pre-defined tasks and traffic control.

To minimize such disruptions and optimize workflows, Omron has developed a Fleet Simulator that allows managers to simulate traffic and workflows.

 

Omron’s Fleet Simulator. Image used courtesy of Omron.

 

This allows for planning, identifying and troubleshooting potential bottlenecks, and reconfiguration before deployment of robotic fleets. Utilizing the simulator with Omron’s Fleet Manager allows users an easy way to simulate their applications by changing the operating mode. 

 

Omron’s Fleet Simulator

One of the key features of Omron’s Simulator includes its utilization of the EM2100 common hardware appliance. This appliance can be used as a Fleet Manager or Back up Fleet Manager providing it is set up with a software license. Additionally, the device can simulate up to 10 robots that can be split up into 3 total fleets. Users can visualize individual robot path planning and interaction with other robots to streamline the movement and avoid collisions or congestion.

 

Omron’s Fleet Manager enables expert control of robot fleets for optimal operations. Image used courtesy of Omron.

 

The impact of changes to maps, path changes, scaling and new software features can be assessed. The simulator can use analytics to scale up the number of robots it can use depending on the size of the facility. By providing a detailed simulation of the environment of a fleet of robots, users can expect valuable insights into the performance of their fleets in the real world. 
 

Another benefit for users is that Omron’s Simulator is designed to be used with Omron’s Fleet Operations Workspace (FLOW) platform for mobile robotics.

 

Expert Fleet Management

Combining Omron’s Simulator with FLOW provides customers with an unparalleled fleet management experience. The FLOW solution enables easy structuring of robotic fleets through a PC or tablet-based interface. Multiple robots constituted of different types (LD250 and LD60/90) can be organized in hybrid fleets with the precise delegation of tasks and traffic pathways. If robots get stuck or block each other Omron’s Fleet Manager can re-route them and re-allocate tasks to a different robot.

Users can implement more intelligent traffic rules to really boost fleet efficiency and fine-tune job prioritization. Jobs can be automatically relayed to fleets in real-time through MES, ERP, and WMS. They can also benefit from a reduction in goal-to-goal travel time by 15%. A cell alignment positioning system (CAPS) provides an added benefit, improving goal precision from ± 100mm to ± 25mm.

 

New FLOW Solutions

If managers are creating new installations or undertaking a factory changeover, the FLOW solution accommodates simulation of small fleets of up to 10 robots to execute this. The centralized intelligence offered by the Fleet Simulator and Fleet Manager can allow managers to reduce down-time in their operations through robot charge management, time-saving automatic system updates, intelligent job assignment, and more.