The benefits of the remote control of industrial robots may be extremely clear for manufacturers. Companies can restart production faster, gain access to a robotics expert more quickly, and reduce T&E and troubleshooting costs.

But what are the specific benefits of remote monitoring and maintenance of robots for integrators? Let’s check them out, but first, here is what we mean by remote monitoring and control of robots.

What Is Remote Monitoring and Control of Robots?

The remote control of industrial robots has been around the manufacturing industry for over 30 years. Remote monitoring and control of robots simply (or not so simply!) means tracking an industrial robot as it performs tasks and controlling it from a distance, either through the cloud or even with a local network.

The remote control of industrial robots includes several other functions, such as programming the robots, troubleshooting, preventative and predictive maintenance, and assessing ways in which the equipment could be better utilized.

Industrial robots that have remote monitoring and control capabilities help manufacturers alike more effectively manage robotic-based production processes to ensure optimal levels of throughput and prevent costly downtimes. They are also proving beneficial in addressing the labor shortage. Based on estimates from some industry specialists, the worldwide production monitoring sector will jump to USD $6.4 billion by 2023 (an annual CAGR of 9.8%).

As technologies in remote access robotics and edge computing continue to evolve, new solutions are emerging and taking the remote monitoring and control of robots to a whole new level: by enabling manufacturers—and more particularly integrators—to actually carry out remote error recovery on industrial robots.

It’s one thing to know that something is going wrong with a robot or that it has completely stopped functioning. But it is an entirely new frontier if an employee or integrator can actually fix the problem remotely and right on the spot. Olis® Connect is an example of these most recent innovations.

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Top Benefits of Industrial Robot Remote Monitoring and Control for Robot Integrators

The need for industrial robots continues to surge, driven by:

Crippling staffing issues
An aging manufacturing workforce
The supply chain ripple effects of the global pandemic
More manufacturers transitioning to Industry 4.0
Government grants that support businesses on their paths toward end-to-end automation

According to many studies, the global industrial robotics market will grow to USD $88.55 billion by 2030, with an annual CAGR of 12.1%. Inevitably, the level of sophistication of the equipment themselves will lead to a higher level of sophistication of industrial robots.

More than ever, integrators will be called upon to upskill and sharpen their robotics know-how—all while finding new ways to support the very clients they serve in the implementation, onboarding, maintenance, and troubleshooting of a new generation of industrial robots.

There are many benefits to using remote monitoring and control of robots from a business perspective. The forward-thinking integrators we spoke to named these top 3 benefits they have experienced firsthand.

Support more projects and customers

Integrators experience the same scenario over and over again when it comes to troubleshooting clients’ robots. They get a call and try to guide the client’s team over the phone or via videoconference to detect what the problem is.

More often than not, the integrator is forced to make a trip to the client’s site, which could be just down the road, in another city, or in another region altogether. This takes time. And if the integrator has several different clients experiencing problems at once, it becomes difficult to manage.

With enhanced remote control for industrial robots, and particularly with robot error recovery, integrators can drastically reduce the inefficient back-and-forth with their clients’ robotics teams. Travel times can be almost completely eliminated, which enables integrators to serve more customers at any given time. Integrators can therefore support more projects with less effort and travel; they can therefore do more troubleshooting and client calls per week.

Provide Fast, Best-In-Class Support

Integrators often struggle with traveling to a client’s plant to troubleshoot an industrial robot—only to discover that the operators cannot remember why it stopped working or malfunctioned in the first place. Intermittent bugs can be a dime a dozen with certain customers, which exacerbates travel time and a lack of productivity.

With remote monitoring and control of customer robots, integrators can offer best-in-class support to outedge the competition. They can easily provide faster troubleshooting, leveraging video playbacks, to uncover what really happened with the robots.

Integrators also point to the fact that thanks to robot remote control and monitoring, they offer customers expert access at a fraction of the cost and enable them to get back into production faster.

Expand Your Service Offering

Big, advanced robotics installations can cause many a headache for integrators. Sophisticated robotic technologies like AI or complex machine vision not only require a unique set of skills and experienced know-how. They are also extremely multi-faceted regarding troubleshooting, extensive technical support and maintenance, and optimization. Moreover, these technologies are more likely to fail—more often—because they are made to work with non-standard processes in unstructured environments.

Already with simple robotics setups, experienced integrators have to travel to a customer’s site to fix the problem. While the troubleshooting may only take a few minutes or a day, there is still the travel time and expenses. Take this scenario up a ten-fold notch with AI and machine vision, and you can quickly understand that an integrator may spend days, if not weeks, trying to get everything working again. That integrator, bogged down with one client, is therefore unavailable for any other client requests, which can ramp up customer dissatisfaction and churn.

High-mix/low-volume production setups can also be challenging. The reason?

Customers don’t test run the production as long as for higher-volume productions. If they kickstart high-mix/low-volume projects, they will likely experience more bugs, need more troubleshooting, and require help restarting the line. That means downtimes for them—and a lot of pillar-to-post time for an integrator.

The remote control of robots lets integrators expand their service offering by taking on more advanced and complex projects, which can be additional and lucrative revenue streams. Especially when enhanced with the remote recovery of robots, robotic remote monitoring and control is a boon for integrators looking to manage sophisticated projects and more difficult customers swiftly and effectively.

Integrators’ Perspectives on Remote Monitoring and Control of Robots

We sat down with Ryan Cox, VP of Engineering at Olis Robotics, and Brennen Dugger, President of Blue Collar Automation, an automation and controls solutions provider in Memphis, Tennessee, Karl Ericsson, CEO of Svenska Elektrod AB, a leading system integrator of robots in cobots in Sweden, and Blake Krieger, a robotic systems engineer at Infinity Robotics LLC, which currently install robots in metal fab, warehouse logistics, and packaging line projects, to glean their visions of the remote control of industrial robots.

Olis Robotics: Aim To Go Beyond Robot Monitoring

*Olis Robotics is a plug-and-play, browser-based solution for the* *remote error recovery* *of industrial robots.*

Cox explains that the first step integrators should take is indeed to ensure they master and offer both remote monitoring and control of their customers’ robots.

“In today’s hypercompetitive markets, integrators need to offer value-added services that remain aligned with operating and maintaining industrial robots,” he said. “While T&E fees are reduced, integrators gain massively in efficiency and can even take on more clients.”

However, Cox explained that the next step in supporting customers is through remote error recovery.

“Imagine not having even to set foot at a customer’s site—but being able to resolve a lot of issues from the integrator’s very offices or workshop. Monitoring and diagnosing is one thing, but recovering a robot’s issues and getting production back up via an online tool offers a whole new level of support services.”

Blue Collar Automation: Remote Control of Robots Speeds up Support

From a pure integrator standpoint, Dugger echoed the aforementioned challenges.

“An integrator cannot be in more than one place at a time. With today’s staffing hassles, many integrators don’t have a lot of technical employees,” he said. “Integrators must deal with very short timeframes for support if a robot goes down.”

Blue Collar Automation is a Controls and Automation Integrator specializing in industrial automation.

As Dugger pointed out, with remote monitoring and control of industrial robots, especially with robotic recovery, he and his team can code up to 90% of the equipment without ever stepping foot in a facility. The cost savings for T&E are significant, as is the increase in productivity. As Dugger said, rather than waste time on the road, integrators can spend more time providing stellar service to customers.

Svenska Elektrod AB: Leverage Robot Remote Control to Upgrade Current Customers for Improved Support

Karl Ericsson explained that for his business, even though customers are fully educated and trained on a robot or cobot system, they still need a lot of support.

“They know what to do, but as they try new things, they nevertheless want someone to hold their hands,” he said. “We have many customers that are geographically dispersed, so in the past, before using Olis Connect for remote error recovery, we had to hold their hands via telephone, WhatsApp, videoconferencing, etc. It was more difficult. Now, with remote monitoring and control of a robot or cobot, we can actually really “be” there, see the pendant as well as the whole cell, and walk them through what they need to accomplish.”

Interestingly, Ericsson also mentioned that Svenska Elektrod AB now quotes Olis Connect in every new project. This has several advantages.

“Not only do customers get to control their T&E expenses but they also benefit from rapid support no matter where our experts are,” he explained.

Ericsson also wants to upgrade his current customer base to Olis Connect.

“Due to a shortage of integrators and the level of work we have, we want to have an expert or two who remains at our offices and support our customers using Olis Connect. This way, we can do more with less staff.”

Infinity Robotics LLC: Remote monitoring of robots is a great way to hire top talent

“As a robotics systems integrator, our biggest challenge is juggling our time,” Blake Krieger said. “On the business side, we have plenty of opportunities for new projects, proposals, and concepts; however, on the flip side, we have existing projects on the floor that need to be delivered and supported.”

Infinity Robotics decided to adopt a robot remote monitoring, control and recovery system in order to accelerate customer support.

“It helps to actually see what is going on—and not just rely on talking our way through the problem or using texts and emails. With these communication channels, it is hard to catch the tone and urgency. So with remote recovery for robots, we can resolve an issue in 10 minutes rather than 30-plus minutes.”

Infinity Robotics has also observed that Olis Connect facilitates teamwork.

“Everyone works a little differently; but now, with remote monitoring and control of each robot, we have the flexibility to get people working together to resolve an issue without being on-site. Now, not all of our team has to be road warriors.”

Infinity Robotics LLC is a robotic system integrator based in Minnesota.

Krieger also explained that it makes it much easier to recruit top talent in a broader geographical pool as hard-to-find experts can work remotely with Olis Connect. “For example, I have a control engineer and other specialists that work miles away. While we had a harder time hiring locally, we expanded our recruitment reach and had our new staff work with our remote recovery system for robots.

Key Takeaways

Remote control and monitoring for industrial robots are proving to be a panacea for time-strapped integrators looking to support their customers and expand their businesses properly.

With new technologies, including robot error recovery, manufacturers and fabrication shops looking to elevate their production workflows in terms of efficiency and throughput will increasingly turn to integrators who can offer the support agility they need to keep operations working like a well-oiled machine.

How Robot Integrators Benefits From Remote Control For Industrial Robots