RB-LOG

The main outcome of the current project will be the development of a cost-effective fleet of robots governed by a flexible Fleet Management System (FSM) performing autonomous indoor logistic transport at small buildings of semi structured human environments. The fleet will be flexible and easily adaptable to a diverse range of architectures and building operating models. Such environments could be hospitals, clinical sites, care centers, hotels, restaurants, company premises or retail shops.

In health-care institutions there are a number of employees that spend many man-hours for transporting food, clothes, waste, storage, other material, etc. For example, a typical 200 bed hospital moves on a weekly basis: 98 km for dietary, 116 km for linen, 79 km for pharmaceuticals, 156 km for environmental services, 47 km other material transfer and 34 km for transport of lab specimens and samples. Hence, overall 530 km on a weekly bases should be covered by the employees for material transfer, which is equivalent to more than 100 man-hours per week (2.6 PMs per month). Similar transport demands occur in hotels and also in retail centers that prepare online orders and in the food industry, etc. Although automation solutions exist for large scale structured environments, they do not exist for small size buildings of semi-structured environment.

Our goal is to develop a new, cost-effective, robotic indoor transport solution that will be specially suited for small residences, hotels, supermarkets/warehouses and other small semi-structured buildings and will automate the transport process and free workforce for tasks that entail higher added value. To this end, Robotnik, UBITECH and SingularLogic Cy will develop RB-LOG, a modular, adaptable hardware and software system, comprising autonomous transport robots that will be coordinated by an intuitive, flexible, Fleet Management System (FMS).

RB-LOG will employ novel sensor technology and optimised FMS software in order to provide the most cost-effective and fastest to install solution and lower the transportation costs by 50% – 80%. The fleet management system will be easily interfaced to intra-logistics software in order to automate the whole value chain from the back-end to the customer/patient point. In addition, the proposed system shall increase the service quality by providing traceability during delivery and controlled environmental conditions which are especially useful for hospitals, hotels and the food industry.

ROBOTNIK IN THE PROJECT
Robotnik is the project coordinator and project promoter, provider of the robots equipped with lifting mechanisms, developer of the logistics cart solution and responsible of the work packages dedicated to system Integration, wireless distributed periphery, dissemination, exploitation and commercialization.