Enterprises are turning to automation to augment their staffs alongside manually-operated vehicles. However, this has added complexity and made the orchestration of workflows within a facility difficult. SICK AG and InOrbit Inc. today said they are integrating SICK’s Tag-LOC sensor system with InOrbit’s robot operations platform.
The companies said the combination will enhance robot operations, or RobOps, efficiency and safety by extending customers’ ability to manage a wide range of mobile equipment.
“SICK and InOrbit share the goal of making it easy for humans and technology to work together,” stated David Adams, director of strategy and business exploration at SICK. “We are excited that our Tag-LOC System helps further this goal for our shared customers.”
SICK Tag-LOC adds tags across assets
The SICK Tag-LOC system consists of fixed antennas and low-cost, ultra-wideband tags that can be attached to equipment, inventory, or even workers’ safety gear. Its integration with InOrbit provides support in a single platform for fleets combining autonomous and manual vehicles, said SICK.
The partners said the combination “unlocks congruent real-time analytics across vehicles, as well as the execution of complex workflows in accordance with traffic rules.” For example, a user could set a traffic management rule to give priority to a person pushing a cart or driving a forklift at an intersection so that any mobile robots would wait.
Founded in 1946, SICK is a leading global manufacturer of sensors, safety systems, machine vision, encoders, and automatic identification products for industrial applications. With more than 3,500 patents, the Waldkirch, Germany-based company offers technology for every phase of production in the logistics, automotive, packaging, electronics, food and beverage, and material handling markets.
InOrbit orchestrates management
InOrbit said that in addition to existing support for automated guided vehicles (AGVs) and autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) it is now possible to track and orchestrate the movement of equipment such as forklifts, pallet jacks, and carts. This allows consistent management of all assets, claimed the Mountain View, Calif.-based company.
“For the first time, customers in industries such as 3PL [third-party logistics] and manufacturing can have robots, people, manually operated vehicles, and fixed infrastructure like security cameras, automatic doors, chargers, and other IoT [Internet of Things] devices working together in harmony through InOrbit’s RobOps platform,” stated Florian Pestoni, founder and CEO of InOrbit.
“This is an important step forward in enabling software-defined operations,” he added.
This solution is immediately available to customers looking to integrate their manual and automated vehicles. The open-source Python connector for SICK Tag-LOC RTLS into InOrbit is available on GitHub.