A Fresh Approach to Robot Monitoring and Management

Robotics technology slashes downtime and lowers barriers to automation adoption.

By Fredrik Ryden, CEO, Olis Robotics

Olis remote robot monitoring and error correction technology enables rapid resolution of unplanned robot downtime issues. Image courtesy of Olis Robotics

Packaging and palletizing are among the most popular applications for robot assistance due to the laborious, repetitive, and unergonomic nature of the work. Workers appreciate being able to focus on less strenuous, higher value tasks. And management appreciates the consistent quality, throughput boost, and 24/7 availability provided by robotic packaging cells.

But what happens when a robot packaging cell unexpectedly comes to a stop?

The first — and worst — thing that happens is that a costly downtime clock starts ticking. At a Tier 1 automotive firm that could mean millions of dollars lost every hour. Even at small companies, every hour of unplanned downtime can create losses measured in tens of thousands of dollars.

Next, panicked calls are made to integrators, who then must travel onsite to assess the problem and devise a fix, all while the downtime clock keeps ticking and costs mount.

There are several ways in which an automated packaging cell can come to an unexpected stop, says Dillon Sego, Director of Engineering at CRG Automation, a Louisville, Ky.-based firm with 25 years of experience in secondary packaging automation. CRG’s solutions move millions of packages every day across North America.

“The most common causes of unplanned downtime in packaging cells include a lack of consistency with incoming product, products being skewed out of position, damage to grippers and suction cups, and operator error,” explains Sego.

In the past, dealing with unexpected robot downtime would often require sending CRG engineers to the airport to catch a flight to a customer facility.

“This adds to the time and cost for customers who are already frustrated because the system is down, which can lead to tough situations. And it’s reactive. You’ve got no idea how the robot faulted. And you’re trying to figure out how the fault happened when really, the only way would be if you were able to witness it happening at the time or watch it happening again,” says Sego.

Downtime is incredibly impactful to customers, says Chris Gallagher, Chief Sales Officer at Pearson Packaging Systems, a company that has installed about 22,000 machines over the past 70 years, including three decades experience as a robotics integrator.

“Our systems support 24/7 operations with Fortune 500 companies who are focused on hitting quarterly revenue targets. Even with low-cost products, the expense when automation isn’t functioning at full capacity starts mounting up. Our ability to support our customers with immediate solutions is paramount to our ability to deliver better outcomes for those customers,” says Gallagher.

Traditional Remote Monitoring Systems Have Limited Forensic Capabilities

Remote robot monitoring systems, which saw widespread adoption during the social distancing phase of the recent pandemic, solve some of the challenges.

Traditional remote monitoring systems enable companies to gain access to robotics experts more quickly, thereby reducing troubleshooting costs, and allowing production to restart faster.

The limitations of these systems are that they provide remote monitoring only, their forensic capabilities are limited, and they offer no way to remotely operate the robot to fix the cause of downtime and restart the robot.

Traditional remote robot monitoring technologies will send alerts out when unplanned robot downtime happens, but they don’t provide you or your integrator with additional features that could be used to diagnose and fix the problem remotely.

A new approach enables integrators — and end users — to overcome these limitations by combining remote robot diagnostics and control. The result is a massive reduction in downtime costs, since it eliminates the requirement to travel onsite to fix every issue that might cause a robot to come to an unexpected stop.

A fresh approach to remote robot monitoring and management enables integrators to tackle unplanned downtime with unprecedented speed, eliminating financial and technical obstacles to automation adoption.

Dubbed ‘Olis’ and consisting of several Phone-over-Ethernet cameras, a compute box and software, the new remote robot monitoring and control system provides 24/7 low latency video and data access to any robot cell. When secure remote access has been configured, automation can be monitored and managed remotely via any browser-capable device.

When a robot error occurs, the system sends out an alert, completely avoiding the cloud —and all the cybersecurity risks associated with it — throughout the entire process. Olis also supplies the video forensics required to quickly determine the cause of robot failure. Moreover, it allows remote operators to remotely correct errors and perform actions such as jogging a gripper to release a part to get production restarted.

“This technology gives you the ability to see the cause of robot failure instantly, without any guesswork. You can see what happened beforehand, enabling you to quickly find the root causes and plan and execute a course of corrective action. CRG is always looking for ways to bring the most innovative technologies to our customers and Olis definitely fits into that category,” explains Sego.

Issue with packaging robot solved in 30 seconds

Olis Connect provides unique remote error correction functionality that enables integrators to reduce service calls from hours and days to a matter of minutes. Image courtesy of Olis Robotics Olis Robotics

When Pearson Packaging Systems recently received a call from a customer regarding a packaging robot that had reached an unexpected configuration, Chief Controls Engineer, Shawn Cheney was able to use Olis’ video data to quickly work out what happened.

“As soon as I saw the images, I was able to see that a robot that was designed to be ‘right-handed’ had been deployed in a ‘left-handed’ orientation. We were able to solve the issue in 30 seconds,” explains Cheney.

For CRG, Olis allows their engineers to service more industrial robots, across a wider geographical area. But the technology also boosts end users’ sense of security about deploying automation in the first place by lowering the barriers to adoption, says Sego.

“The cost of ongoing robot maintenance and unplanned downtime and a lack of engineering personnel has been a huge barrier to adoption, especially for smaller companies with limited engineering personnel. Olis empowers these companies to deploy automation safe in the knowledge that any robot downtime can be solved quickly and effectively with minimal cost to their business.”

Remote robot monitoring and error correction technologies like Olis are rapidly becoming the standard for automation deployments, says Pearson Packaging Systems’ Cheney.

“In the future, all automation cells will have remote robot monitoring and control technology. It already seems impractical or unreasonable to even try and work in the way that we did a decade ago or even five years ago or two years ago. Technologies like Olis provide so much more information, so much more quickly, enabling us to solve problems faster than before.”