Get acquainted with Omron’s new mobile robot command center
February 3, 2020
Omron’s self-mapping, self-navigating mobile robots are an innovative solution for automating materials transport tasks. Although each individual robot can act autonomously, there’s much more power in a coherent, coordinated group. Omron have put tremendous amounts of design and engineering work into creating the ultimate fleet management system for their LD mobile robots.
Omron’s Fleet Operations Workspace (FLOW) Core is a brand-new system for coordinating the LD Series that seamlessly integrates all of the robots’ high-level, fleet-specific functions into a single software suite. This all-encompassing solution puts manufacturers in complete control of productivity, throughput and traceability.
FLOW Core is also responsible for running the navigation and mapping functionality on individual robots, even when they’re not part of a fleet. In this particular post, Omron will focus on the ways in which FLOW Core delivers industry-leading fleet management capabilities.
FLOW Core ensures efficient and effective fleet operation
For manufacturers seeking to optimize a fleet (which could range from just a few robots to as many as 100), FLOW core offers a number of benefits. The solution dramatically improves job assignment and traffic control with intelligent software. Job execution time is shorter thanks to improved navigation and driving algorithms.
FLOW Core also boosts the flexibility of a mobile robot application via alternate path navigation and easy goal location programming that enables a quick response to any factory layout changes. The system prioritizes important jobs and selects the fastest routes based on human and robot traffic, all while displaying the job queue and robot location and status.
It’s easy to set up and manage FLOW Core
Omron’s goal is to make implementation as easy as possible, and FLOW Core is no exception. Omron’s popular MobilePlanner app continues to be the control center, with a user interface that provides the tools for all major tasks. These include creating and editing maps, defining goals, setting tasks, managing job priorities, commanding fleets, and optimizing fleet configurations.
FLOW Core integrates seamlessly with factory systems
The fleet management system is designed to quickly and easily integrate with any factory’s manufacturing execution system (MES) or enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution. The integration toolkit provided with FLOW Core connects an LD mobile robot fleet with any MES/ERP system via industry-standard RESTful, SQL or Rabbit MQ APIs.
Once connected, FLOW Core also reduces the amount of programming required. It automatically optimizes the fleet by determining the fastest routes for each task, creating alternative routes when paths are blocked, prioritizing important jobs in real-time and scheduling job assignments and battery charging in the most efficient way possible.
FLOW Core is a continuously improving solution
As with all Omron solutions, FLOW Core is an intelligent system that is designed to be scalable and capable of continuous improvement. Through their close relationship with global manufacturers, Omron constantly discover new ways to improve the fleet management system to meet real-world needs.
