UBITECH actively participates in the kick-off meeting, in Valencia, Spain (November 28, 2017) of the RB-LOG EUROSTARS project, officially started on November 1st, 2017 – undertaking the leadership and coordination of the project’s Cypriot node. The project is funded by European Commission under Horizon 2020 Programme (Grant Agreement No. E! 11553) and spans on the period November 2017 – April 2020. The RB-LOG project aims to develop a new, cost-effective, robotic indoor transport solution that will be specially suited for small residences, hotels, supermarkets/warehouses and other small semi-structured buildings and will automate the transport process and free workforce for tasks that entail higher added value. The aforementioned goal will be achieved through the development of a cost-effective fleet of robots governed by a flexible and easily adaptable to a diverse range of architectures and building operating models Fleet Management System performing autonomous indoor logistic transport at small buildings of semi structured human environments, including but not limited to hospitals, clinical sites, care centers, hotels, restaurants, company premises and retail shops.
In this context, UBITECH undertakes the responsibility to implement the RB-LOG Fleet Management System (FMS) that will a) manage the configuration for a fleet of mobile robots, as each mobile robot gets its configuration data from RB-LOG saving time and making updates less error-prone; b) perform traffic control and optimize traffic flow by sharing each robot’s position and trajectory with other robots in its vicinity and allowing path adjustments to avoid potential conflicts, c) offer queuing manager functionality, receiving job requests from call buttons and other equipment management systems (elevator controllers, door controllers, etc.), making decision about which robot to dispatch a job to and providing real-time job status updates to connected automation equipment; and d) provide the communication interfaces for the low-level control software and for the high-level logistics and management software of the host company such as enterprise resource planning and human resources management software packages – enabling the configuration, automation and supervision of the entire sequence of tasks ranging from the ERP configuration to the multi robot task and path planning.
Our vision is to develop a Fleet Management System that will make the overall system more efficient and more cost-effective and result in a better Return Of Investment, reduced inventory and lower operating costs and therefore make RB-LOG a superior solution with respect to existing products in the market, incorporating three key features that will render RB-LOG more competitive: a) to integrate the delivery process with the inbound logistics in order to automate the entire chain starting from the inventory space and terminating to the customer/client/patient location; b) to enable fast, flexible and cost-effective RB-LOG installation in buildings having diverse architectures and which are subject to different operating models, with automated customization in order to guarantee the absence of interlocks or starvation of multi-robot navigation without additional programming efforts; and to minimize the installed sensors and markers in the building corridors, and, therefore, to minimize the installation cost and time.
