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I delved into this exact area in the last startup I was at. I worked pretty extensively with Kuka 6 axis industrial robots and spent a lot of time programming t

by ganonm 7y ago

I delved into this exact area in the last startup I was at. I worked pretty extensively with Kuka 6 axis industrial robots and spent a lot of time programming them as well as integrating them with our custom hardware. Totally agree that there is a big opportunity for a unified software layer on top of all this hardware. The system I ended up building allowed users to monitor the robot from the cloud, including telemetry such as end effector sensors and axis positions, as well as uptime. It also allowed steaming tool paths from the web platform to the robots directly with appropriate safety measures such as manual intervention required to start it. Would love to generalise this sort of thing and create a turnkey solution that allowed people to focus on solving their actual robotics problems, not spend all their time glueing together disparate components.

contingencies 7y ago
Sounds interesting, although single vendor is much easier than multi-vendor, especially when you throw in parallel purchasing decisions on short timelines and both execute and receive sales and tech support in Chinese... A generalized solution necessarily has a strong spatial component. Most vendor motion planning applications seem to be either custom and cell/unit-operation specific or are expensive specialist general applications with high complexity that often exist as plugins to CAM tools like SolidWorks. I don't have the time and resources to acquire and delve in to those, so my approach has been to accept the fact and go ghetto with cheap local hardware that comes without motion planning or integration support, observe existing industry processes, and attempt to self-build iteratively. Luckily I've already built a team to produce custom robotics cheaply and quickly and recently added an experienced production manager from the automotive sector, so we have an advantage in this space.

by ganonm 7y ago

contingencies 7y ago

Sounds interesting, although single vendor is much easier than multi-vendor, especially when you throw in parallel purchasing decisions on short timelines and both execute and receive sales and tech support in Chinese... A generalized solution necessarily has a strong spatial component. Most vendor motion planning applications seem to be either custom and cell/unit-operation specific or are expensive specialist general applications with high complexity that often exist as plugins to CAM tools like SolidWorks. I don't have the time and resources to acquire and delve in to those, so my approach has been to accept the fact and go ghetto with cheap local hardware that comes without motion planning or integration support, observe existing industry processes, and attempt to self-build iteratively. Luckily I've already built a team to produce custom robotics cheaply and quickly and recently added an experienced production manager from the automotive sector, so we have an advantage in this space.