Yaskawa taps Realtime Robotics’ motion planning expertise

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Lee Moulder, sales and application director, Yaskawa Nordic. Yaskawa partnered with Realtime Robotics.

Yaskawa is tapping Realtime Robotics’ motion planning technology to improve a variety of materials handling and fulfillment applications, including piece picking and mixed case palletizing. Yaskawa said using Realtime’s technology enables its robot cells to be deployed and used more efficiently.

The first of these mixed pallet robot cells will soon start being installed at customer sites. Each cell consists of Realtime’s motion planning solution with two Motoman-GP180 robots with YRC1000 control system, servo grippers, roller conveyors, and safety fencing.

The companies said their joint multi-robot architecture empowers a streamlined approach to deployments by eliminating the need for programming interference zones. This results in robotic work cells that have smaller footprints and higher outputs.

“Planning motion in real time is central to safe autonomy, but the algorithms were too slow,” George Konidaris, founder and chief roboticist at Realtime, recently told The Robot Report. “The core breakthroughs in motion began in 1979 with an MIT paper, but industrial robotics hadn’t changed much in 40 years.”

“At Duke University, we figured out how to make time-consuming processes go faster. The motion-planning algorithms were good but sequential; we needed massive parallelism,” he added. “We’ve blown open what you can do with stupid robots, now that they can adapt to changing workspaces.”

“We are pleased to be further intensifying and expanding our industrial control technology,” said Lee Moulder, sales and application director at Yaskawa Nordic. “The partnership with Realtime combines control for logic, motion and robotics with solutions for Industry 4.0 applications.”

Realtime Robotics is a startup that spun out of Duke University in 2016. It also was once a resident of MassRobotics, the Boston-based non-profit group that serves as an innovation hub for robotics and smart connected devices.

Realtime Robotics has raised about $16 million to date. It raised an $11.7 million Series A in October 2019 and then a $2 million Venture Round in late 2020.

To learn more about how Realtime Robotics is helping robots avoid collisions, read this profile of the company. It dives into how the company was founded, dives into its motion planning technology and more.