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How it Works
Industrial Mobile Robotics (IMR) technology employs sophisticated, state-of-the-art artificial intelligence, Bayesian statistics, image processing and machine learning methods to enable vehicles to automate core material handling processes. IMR technology acts as a platform for truly autonomous behavior, allowing material handling vehicles to work in environments that were previously not economically or technically feasible to serve.
Seegrid’s core IMR technology relates to the development and exploitation of 3D evidence grids for machine perception. In an evidence grid, many views of a scene are taken (with stereo cameras or other ranging sensors), and the data from each individual snapshot are accumulated into one 3D model of the scene. A 3D evidence grid breaks the world up into individual cubes called voxels, and then statistically weights those cubes with certain kinds of evidence (information about the world).
These grids allow Seegrid’s technology to deal with environmental uncertainty better than the current generation of commercial automation offerings. Where previous robotics and machine vision industrial solutions needed tight precision and close proximity in the environment, Seegrid’s solutions deal with variability and uncertainty in both the environment as well as in the work to be completed which is more realistic and true to life in the “Murphy’s Law” world of material handling.
What makes Seegrid’s robots different from today’s AGVs (Automated Guided Vehicles) is that the company’s IMR technology is the first to provide early-stage capabilities of an autonomous robot behavior with Sense, Move, Analyze, Interact and Repeat capabilities. Current AGVs are at the peak of their technology capacity where Seegrid’s IMR technology is at the beginning, today providing AGV-like abilities but with greater flexibility and at a considerably lower cost. Flexibility at a lower cost is critical to companies who want to have the ability to do flexible manufacturing, changing work processes on the fly and working in real time to adjust to work volume. One constant within logistics operations is that the business changes. A cost effective robotics solution that can change with the business is important to insure maximum value is gained from any robotics investments.
IMR and Seegrid
Seegrid’s IMR-enabled robots automate material handling work processes without any changes to existing facilities, enabling the automation to be incrementally applied, and for all other ongoing manual work processes to continue
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| Early iteration called the PAN robot |
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unabated side by side with the new automation. This automation works even as the facility is rearranged, and as work processes are added, deleted or changed. The company’s IMR-enabled robots manage a set of internal,statistical, detailed 3D maps of the facility and work queues of requested and future jobs. At the same time they provide real-time management interfaces, and maintain activity and audit logs which capture usage information. IMR-enabled robots provide WalkThroughThenWork™ capabilities, providing an operator with the capacity to simply and easily instruct the robot along a desired path, adding behaviors such as horns and stop stations, usually in minutes. Seegrid robots literally come straight off the truck, an operator quickly inputs the path and the robot is immediately productive.
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