Realtime Robotics, the leader in collision-free autonomous motion planning for industrial robots, announced the release of its new RapidPlan software, which helps manufacturers design and deploy industrial automation faster and more efficiently.
“Optimizing the efficiency of your industrial and factory operations should not be held back by technical barriers”
In an industrial setting, each robot in use needs a complex motion path for each task that identifies a string of points in space. Depending on the complexity of the project, such as the number of robots being programmed, the number of tasks, and whether users are starting from scratch or making modifications, the entire process can take anywhere from weeks to months of engineering time to accomplish.
Realtime Robotics RapidPlan software autonomously creates and choreographs all robot movements and removes the need for brand-specific robot programming. Within the software environment, users simply click on robots and target points to visualize task plans, saving weeks to months of programming time per project. The same software provides the simulation environment and controls real robots. Cell modeling, task planning, programming and operations are all handled within the same workflow tool. The motions in simulation and as-built reality match, dramatically speeding up the design and deployment processes.
With any changes, such as geometry or robot locations, automated robot paths remain collision-free, giving manufacturers highly-flexible, multipurpose workcells. RapidPlan adapts to changing environments, either using the information from PLCs (programmable logic controllers) or from dedicated 3D sensors.
“Optimizing the efficiency of your industrial and factory operations should not be held back by technical barriers,” added George Konidaris, co-founder and Chief Roboticist of Realtime Robotics. “We specifically designed RapidPlan to deliver an accurate simulation of robot task planning, making it easy to program models and use them directly on the factory floor, but did so in a way that streamlined the process and made the technology easy-to-use for all.”
For example, bin picking has traditionally been a challenging application for a multi-robot setup. Users don’t know the exact part location for picking, making it challenging to predict an accurate collision-free path for multiple robots that are completing tasks in the same area. With RapidPlan, robot space reservations are released in real time as soon as the robot moves to another location, dramatically improving cycle time or other parameters that users prioritize.
During the on-site physical validation stage, a manufacturer typically needs to have a highly-skilled team working after hours to manually run through every move combination, ensuring seamless operations on the live factory floor. Because RapidPlan inherently produces collision-free paths, it reduces the need to verify against potential collisions – resulting in significant time savings.
RapidPlan helps manufacturers have peace of mind in a high-stress and tight space environment, where every minute of downtime is expensive. It is easy to make a mistake, such as grabbing the wrong teach pendant and jogging the robot in the wrong direction, causing a collision. RapidPlan will alert the user of any potential collision beforehand, so steps can be taken to prevent it. If a cycle is interrupted for any reason, the user can easily and quickly return the robots to their home poses without needing to individually jog them home.