Realtime Robotics
Canvas Category Software : Operational Technology : Industrial Robot
Realtime Robotics was founded with the goal of transforming how robots and autonomous vehicles move. Realtime Robotics has continued to transform automation, with products that provide trailblazing features such as risk-aware driving, high-productivity multi-robot workcells and automated robot vision that continuously calibrates itself.
Assembly Line
Realtime Robotics Awarded for Robot ‘Choreography’ Tool
The 2024 “Award for Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Robotics & Automation” (IERA) goes to Realtime Robotics. The US company from Boston won the prestigious prize for its fully-automatic motion planning tool for industrial robots. The solution develops an optimized “choreography” for robots closely working together in workcells without collision.
Realtime Robotics, has pioneered the optimization of robotic workcells to improve performance and cut cycle times. The tool solves the task of motion planning at high speed – evaluating hundreds of thousands of solutions before providing manufacturers with optimized paths, sequences and tool rotations for their robots.
Mitsubishi Electric Corporation Leads Series B Investment in Realtime Robotics
Realtime Robotics, the leader in collision-free autonomous motion planning for industrial robots, announced that it has secured a strategic investment from Mitsubishi Electric Corporation. This is the lead investment in Realtime Robotics’ recently opened Series B round. Mitsubishi Electric was also a participant in the Series A round, and will be adding a senior representative to Realtime’s Board of Directors.
The funds will be used to support the refinement and scalability of the company’s revolutionary robot workcell optimization and runtime solutions, which significantly help engineers and manufacturers reduce costs and increase productivity.
Customers, including automotive manufacturers BMW and Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles, as well as integrators Valiant TMS and Schaeffler Group, report improved cycle times, reduced downtime, and increased throughput as a result of working with Realtime.
By increasing its stake, Mitsubishi Electric plans to further integrate Realtime’s cutting-edge motion planning technology into 3D simulators and other software to optimize manufacturing through the power of digital twins. Later, Mitsubishi Electric expects to incorporate Realtime’s technology into factory automation (FA) control system devices, such as programmable logic controllers (PLCs), servo motors and computer numerical controllers (CNCs), to ensure uninterrupted plant operations by responding to needs for expanded automation capabilities, streamlined plant operations for improved efficiency, and fast responses to unexpected events.
Mitsubishi Electric Automation Demo: Multi-Robot Bin Picking
Valiant TMS and Realtime Robotics Partner to Reduce a Customer's Cycle Time by 17% and Cut Programming Time in Half
Realtime Robotics, the leader in collision-free autonomous motion planning for industrial robots, today announced that Valiant TMS, a full-service Industry 4.0 system integrator, has partnered with the company to apply its innovative Optimization-as-a-Service solution to customers’ manufacturing operations.
The combination of Valiant TMS’ years of manufacturing industry expertise with Realtime Robotics’ proprietary optimization software and experienced robotics engineering insights presents customers with an easy way to improve the efficiency and productivity of their automation operations. Realtime’s solution rapidly generates and tests hundreds of thousands of potential robot paths, determining the best motion sequences based on target sequences, robot reach, and other customer-desired parameters.
In fact, in a recently completed multi-robot application, Valiant TMS used Realtime’s optimization solution to design motion plans with more efficient motion paths, better interlocks, and a faster execution time, ultimately reducing a customer’s robot cycle time by 17% and cutting robot programming time in half.
Realtime Robotics and HLS Partner to Rapidly Optimize Manufacturing
Following the release of its Optimization-as-a-Service (OaaS) solution, Realtime Robotics has announced a partnership with integrated engineering solutions mogul HLS Engineering Group. Realtime will combine its well-orchestrated robotic motion control expertise with HLS’ engineering know-how to enhance the OaaS solution. Through virtual modeling, automated robot path generation, and evaluation, manufacturers can use the OaaS solution to implement robot path changes without disrupting existing processes.
Optimizing Multi-Robot Workcell Performance
What distinguishes the many possible designs? In a good design, every robot spends approximately the same amount of time per cycle; we want to avoid having some robots idle while others are still working. Similarly, in a good design, every robot is able to move without spending much time either waiting for other robots to move out of its way or taking a non-optimal path so as to avoid other robots. The goal of a design is to enable high-performance choreography of the robots.
Our team has developed Optimization-as-a-Service (OaaS), which uses a proprietary algorithm to find high-performing design options that would otherwise take months to be discovered by a team of engineers. We have obtained speedups of 5-20 percent using our OaaS (discussed later), compared to designs that were laboriously developed by experienced engineers. This result highlights that design is both very difficult and very important
🦾 Realtime Robotics Funded an Additional $9.5 Million to Meet Increased Demand for Technology that Transforms Manufacturing
Realtime Robotics, the leader in collision-free autonomous motion planning for industrial robots, today announced that it has secured an additional $9.5 million in funding from Shinhan GIB and Kyobo Life Insurance.
Driven by the strong response to its RapidPlan industrial robotics motion control and collision avoidance software, Realtime will use this additional investment to drive further product enhancements, incorporate feedback from customers and partners, and scale to support additional go-to-market efforts.
Realtime Robotics Now Supplier for BMW Group
Realtime Robotics, the leader in collision-free autonomous motion planning for industrial robots, today announced that it has been named an official supplier for the BMW Group.
Realtime Robotics Announces Additional Funding of $14.4 Million
Realtime Robotics, the leader in collision-free autonomous motion planning for industrial robots, today announced that it has secured $14.4 million in additional funding, with Soundproof Ventures, Heroic Ventures and SIP Global Partners as lead investors. The funding comes on the heels of the official launch of the company’s new RapidPlan software, which helps manufacturers design and deploy industrial automation faster and more efficiently. With RapidPlan, customers can automate the programming, deployment and control of their industrial robots within applications such as automotive or logistics, autonomously creating and choreographing all robot movements without the need for brand-specific robot programming.
Mitsubishi Electric and Realtime Robotics | Collision Avoidance Robotics
Industrial robotics and generation change ahead
Realtime Robotics, a specialist in autonomous motion planning for industrial robots, has announced partnership with Kawasaki Robotics on a project that aims to automate the programming, deployment and control of its industrial robots.
The main benefits include an 80 to 90% reduction in robot programming time, freeing scarce robotic engineers to focus on automating the 90% of auto manufacturing that is still manual. The technology can establish a 100% reduction of line downtime and related costs due to robot collisions, and help optimize the work cell footprint, reduce electric consumption, and lower maintenance costs through reinforcement learning-based optimization software that can iterate hundreds of thousands of options to minimize these cost factors in only a few hours.
How Realtime’s Technology Simplifies Motion Planning
Can Realtime Robotics’ RapidPlan Software Break Through Industrial Automation’s Slow Progress?
Despite continuous advances in the field of robotics, complex motion through space still presents a stumbling block for bots. In oftentimes hectic industrial settings, complex motion that entails a robot getting from point A to point B to perform a task is a feat that generally involves weeks to months of programming time, resulting in movement that’s relatively slow and collision-prone. It’s a challenge that George Konidaris, cofounder and chief roboticist of Realtime Robotics, says has been a persistent hurdle for robotics researchers since 1979—and he thinks RapidPlan represents a significant leap of progress.
Part of the software’s promise is enabling robots to more quickly determine the best path of movement in dynamic environments like factories, which Konidaris says so far hasn’t been accomplished. Software users start with RapidPlan Create, which guides them through the robotic programming phase. Then RapidPlan Control runs the robots’ operations.
Data from Realtime indicates that the software can reduce programming time by 70-80 percent, increase throughput rate by 10-30 percent and decrease a bot’s life cycle cost by up to 50 percent.
Realtime Robotics enhances responsive workcell monitoring by reading CAD files with CAD Exchanger
It was Realtime Robotics who managed to fuse all the latest technological achievements and academic research and to elaborate a specialized toolkit for on-the-fly motion planning. “Realtime Robotics has created technology that solves a 30-year-old challenge in the robotics industry. Our motion planning solution allows industrial automation to move collision-free and respond to obstacles in real time,” says Will Floyd-Jones, Co-Founder & Robotics Engineer in Realtime Robotics.
The initial plan to cobble together various libraries was no longer relevant when Realtime Robotic stumbled upon CAD Exchanger. “We would have to hack a bunch of things together and try to figure out how to get them to import data in one common way. And then we discovered that CAD Exchanger has already solved the problem and would just do that for us,” explains Will Floyd-Jones, Co-Founder & Robotics Engineer in Realtime Robotics.
Realtime Robotics Completes $31.4 Million Series A Funding Round
Realtime Robotics plans on applying the new funds to accelerating its product rollouts and continuing its investment in innovative enhancements and solutions. The company will deepen its reach in the warehouse automation industry, while continuing to serve global automotive manufacturers and their supply chain. Working closely with long term partners and customers, Realtime will also continue to perfect its “holy grail” collaborative system, which incorporates its proprietary real-time planning technology with other certified system components to enable industrial robots to proactively adapt their motions and avoid unwanted contact with humans, while continuously accomplishing their intended tasks.
Start-ups Powering New Era of Industrial Robotics
Much of the bottleneck to achieving automation in manufacturing relates to limitations in the current programming model of industrial robotics. Programming is done in languages proprietary to each robotic hardware OEM – languages “straight from the 80s” as one industry executive put it.
There are a limited number of specialists who are proficient in these languages. Given the rarity of the expertise involved, as well as the time it takes to program a robot, robotics application development typically costs three times as much as the hardware for a given installation.