Artificial Intelligence | MVPro 25 | April 2021

“GAME-CHANGING” ROBOTICS

Robots on the silver screen, like Rocky’s beeping, bugeyed robot butler Sico, might seem a far cry from where the robotics industry is today, but there is a connection for the Franco-American start-up, Fuzzy Logic Robotics. MVPro’s Writer, Joel Davies, explores how the company is pushing the next generation of robotics into the industry with its “game-changing” software.

In a virtual press conference, Fuzzy Logic Robotics (FLR) - the brainchild of Dr Ryan Lober and Antoine Hoarau - announced the first release of Fuzzy Studio™, a universal software platform the company say is, “intuitive and simple like a video game”.

The simplicity of the software exists in part because of the cinema. “The company originally provided artists… with an interface which allowed them to programme industrial robots, specifically for the cinema industry”, said Ryan Lober, co-founder and CEO. “The challenge here was that artists who had never even seen a robot before needed to reprogram these complex things 20 or 30 times a day but without a single line of code. That sort of constraint forced us to find a solution that was far simpler than if we had ever worked directly with engineers and industry in the first place... and gave us a completely different view on making robotics simpler than everyone else who started in the industry”.

Noting that both industrial and collaborative robotics are too costly for truly flexible production due to the complexity of software and integration, the company says only a few handling applications, such as pick-and-place, have been made truly accessible to non-experts and thus cost-effective for flexible production. The vast majority of robotic and cobotic applications require complex and heterogeneous software tools and brand experts.

These tools require significant training and expertise. Fuzzy Logic Robotics say, as a result, more than 75% of the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of a robot is related to software training and services in standard mass production. In flexible production, this number can skyrocket to over 90% of the TCO and “kill the potential return on investment of the robotic system”. Instead, it says Fuzzy Studio™ is an easy-to-use and universal software platform that can help factories automate with robotics quickly, simply and costeffectively - even for complex applications in processing, dispensing and welding. A few of these tasks come up in an industry as complicated and varied as aerospace but for Fuzzy Logic Robotics, it doesn’t have to be rocket science.

“In the aerospace industry… we’re on applications for a specific manufacturer who has over 1000 different types of references that need to be treated for a very time consuming and manual application. What we’re showing with our software for this client is that an operator in the factory can programme the robot visually via our software and have a robot do the same process. Not only are they liberating two operators for their whole day of work, but they’re also removing these very time consuming and labour intensive tasks that none of them appreciates. It’s an application that just wasn’t possible with robotics before because it would have cost them something in the order of €300,000 to programme all of the references. Now an operator can do it on a day to day basis so that’s what’s truly amazing about the application and what you can do with flexible production”.

Some of the most impressive features include drag and drop for Computer-Aided Design (CAD) parts into the 3D digital twin, offline simulation to real-time control, no-code realtime digital twin technology, two-click swapping between any make and model of the robot and one standard interface for all brands of robots.

What all of these features mean is Fuzzy Studio™ covers all of the steps in the integration of a robotic work cell from pre-project, design, and commissioning to real-time production control, inline reprogramming and maintenance. It’s designed to accelerate robotic uptake and usage for all stakeholders, from major manufacturers to small and medium-sized businesses, to systems integrators and even robot OEMs.

Where FLR nails its flag to the mast as a unique provider is in its software-only solution. “Our competitors are some of the top minds in robotics”, said Lober. “The biggest difference between what we do and the majority of the other competitors or start-ups in the space is we are a 100% software solution. Our software is designed to handle applications to go from the CAD of the models we’re trying to actually treat in production all the way to the control of the robot just through software. I think that’s important because there are many applications where you can respond with a hybrid hardware-software solution and it can definitely accelerate things but we made the decision to make our solution a pure software solution”.

The software supports FANUC, ABB, Yaskawa, KUKA and Kawasaki that Lober claims cover more than 90 per cent of robot manufacturers. It also covers 40+ software formats including industrial CAD, STEP and IGES. The range of robots the software is compatible with also allows users to browse through a collection of robot models from the supported brands and filter by the specification. The result of the software is to save labour time, avoid collisions, enhance performance, and reinforce safety.

“We are a start-up that is going to push the next generation of robotics into the industry. Our solution is unique in its software-only nature and this is something that is important for integrating into the existing value chain of stakeholders. We think this is going to be a real game-changer for production because we can truly attain real, flexible production... and we can drive cost down dramatically so it is accessible to anyone”, concluded Lober. MV