In complex industrial production, how can robots realize orderly collaboration of multi-machine scale? How do they adapt to the terminal-diversified logistics scenarios?

It can be solved by integrating the "smart brain" of automated logistics. SEER Robotics's M4 Smart Logistics Management System, which integrates robot scheduling and business systems, provides a one-stop management service for robot-centered automated warehousing and logistics.

M4 consists of five plates, including the RDS unified resource scheduling system with multi-vehicle scheduling as the core, which can meet the business needs of enterprises in different scenarios of scheduling. It provides the optimal solution for robot task allocation, route planning, traffic control, equipment docking, business system docking, and so on.

In this article, we will analyze how the RDS system can improve the efficiency of factory logistics with typical scenario cases.

Seamlessly Collaborates Scheduling Across Floors and Regions

In large factories, it is increasingly common to perform tasks across multiple floors and areas, and the cooperation between robots and intelligent devices is increasing. As an intermediary, the RDS system will dock the upper-level business systems of customers to exchange data and convey tasks downwards to managing robots and other smart devices such as elevators and automatic doors.

Taking the Zhejiang Tailin Bioengineering as an example, the RDS system seamlessly connects with their MES system to support the automatic distribution of tasks and the automatic execution of robots. During this process, the robot route and elevator call rhythm are automatically matched to complete cross-floor task scheduling, and it also allows customers to initiate tasks through the MES system for full process monitoring.

Dynamic Global Programming for Congestion Prevention in Complex Production Workshops

In the equipment manufacturing workshop, the environmental conditions for multiple robots to perform tasks are even more severe, such as the narrow aisles that only allow a single vehicle to pass through and the mixed operation environment of humans and machines, making them highly susceptible to congestion and even deadlocks due to conflicting robot paths.

However, the RDS system supports dynamic global collaborative planning. By analyzing the robot's position in real-time, setting task priorities, and considering environmental changes, it can perform multi-robot path search and traffic control and dynamically adjust paths to avoid congestion.

Taking WINFAT HOLDINGS LIMITED as an example, the number of intelligent forklifts totaled 44, and there were multiple human-robot interaction work scenarios. Based on the collaborative planning of multi-machine operation paths with the RDS system, dozens of robots avoided deadlocks, congestion, and other problems when working centrally, achieving a 100% accuracy rate of human-machine collaboration and an overall production efficiency improvement of 300%.

Pre-Ordering to Prevent Empty Loads in Warehousing and Logistics Scenarios

The resource waste caused by unloaded robots has always been a problem for most enterprises. In order to solve this problem, the RDS system innovatively introduces the modes of “hitchhiking” and “pre-ordering” to improve production efficiency.

Based on the integrated evaluation function, the RDS system considers the global optimal task allocation scheme from the bottom and provides the pre-order mode for the round-trip transportation from the warehouse to the production line. It prioritizes assigning waybills to robots that are about to complete their tasks. For the multi-storage robots, such as the container robots, it provides the “hitchhiking” mode, which allows them to pick up and place their goods at the nearest warehouse to prevent robots from running empty and increase the tempo.

Take Chinawrr as an example; after the storage center landed on the automated pallet warehouse project, managers can more accurately understand the dynamics of the area based on the real-time data of the RDS system, which facilitates the dynamic adjustment of the task allocation of the inbound and outbound warehouses, and the overall transport efficiency has been greatly improved. It realizes the inbound and outbound warehousing of 290 pallets/hour unilaterally, and the storage capacity has been increased by 20%.

Beat Simulation for More Accurate Production

In the electronics and other precision manufacturing industries, accurate control of production beats is the key to improving production efficiency and product quality. How to accurately assess the production cycle and determine the number of robots required is the first consideration for enterprises to implement robots.

RDS system allows to build simulation beats in ten minutes. It creates simulation tasks through the Tianfeng task system, adds the number of robots dynamically, and supports random library and concurrent design to simulate production scenarios in real life, facilitate timely adjustments, and make the most accurate evaluations. RDS system supports the simultaneous simulation of hundreds of robots operating scenarios, thousands of tasks at the same time, the simulation results can be directly applied to the real business.

For example, the Swedish factory of Electrolux, a world-renowned home appliance company, uses the RDS system to conduct simulation of robot and system interfacing, troubleshoot business logic, optimize multi-system communication and production beat problems. They successfully land the robots to optimize the production process from semi-finished products to finished product transportation.