Case-Study: Autonomous Navigation as a Service

Control Software at a New Level

This is an absolute novelty: offloading even real-time-critical control functions for autonomous navigation of mobile robots and transport systems to virtualized factory edge infrastructures. Made possible at Osram-Campus in Schwabmünchen with one of the first indoor/outdoor 4G campus networks in Germany.

The joint project of Gestalt Robotics, Fraunhofer IPK, Deutsche Telekom, Ericsson, and Osram breaks new ground in industry-grade virtualized industrial control following the concepts of cloud robotics. The technical concept comprises a closed-loop, real-time critical control cycle between mobile machines in the field via a low-latency connected factory edge. Extended Quality of service (QoS) of the 4G network as well as fallback strategies and redundancies guarantee a robust and reliable operation. Solely, person safety functions are left onboard.

Intelligent Cloud Robotics Roadmap

Our project pioneers the modularization and virtualization of future control and AI software stacks in industries providing benefits all along the life-cycle:

• faster commissioning

• updates-on-the-fly

• a modularized and extendable software architecture, e.g. for value-added AI services

• seamless scaling and redundancies

•  comprehensive vendor-agnostic control and fleet management strategies and many more

Furthermore, we see the potential to eliminate the typical onboard PC as a main cost driver for mobile robots and transport systems. In addition, offloading the software stack enables longer operation times due to less onboard energy consumption. This has been investigated in detail in a study we made: Paper soon. As a result, 12-25% energy savings are feasible and the computing onboard hardware can be reduced to a Raspberry Pi-like device.

Edge & Cloud Robotics in Comparison

Our solution is CE certified and in successful daily operation. It includes M2M communication with stations to perform fully automatic handovers as well as communication with automatic doors and a fire alarm system. We are currently working on an outdoor extension.

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