Monitoring Robots Remotely

Robots need to be kept in tip-top shape, since their work is crit­i­cal to a company’s pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. When a robot mal­func­tions, out­put can be seri­ous­ly com­pro­mised. Even though human work­ers might mon­i­tor their robots close­ly, when mal­func­tion strikes, it is usu­al­ly too late: pro­duc­tion will be halt­ed. ABB​’s Remote Ser­vice address­es this prob­lem, and offers a solu­tion. A mal­func­tion­ing robot is enabled to pro­duce an alarm, which is then received by an ABB ser­vice engi­neer via wire­less tech­nol­o­gy who can imme­di­ate­ly respond with support.

Reac­tive ser­vice is no longer suf­fi­cient in today’s instan­ta­neous grat­i­fi­ca­tion envi­ron­ment. With Remote Ser­vice, ABB can sup­port their robots and cus­tomers in just min­utes. This ser­vice was launched in 2007 and has helped avoid a major­i­ty of pro­duc­tion stoppages.

A ser­vice box is con­nect­ed to the robot’s con­trol sys­tem that can read and trans­mit diag­nos­tic infor­ma­tion. This makes it pos­si­ble to mon­i­tor and ana­lyze the robot’s con­di­tion, proac­tive­ly detect­ing the need for main­te­nance before a mishap occurs.

By mon­i­tor­ing key para­me­ters over time, Remote Ser­vice can iden­ti­fy poten­tial fail­ures and noti­fy both engi­neers and customers.

Fanuc offers Fanuc LIVE, a sup­port sys­tem that mon­i­tors a robot in order to decrease down­time if some­thing hap­pens to the robot. Fanuc Remote Diag­nos­tic allows the cus­tomer to report the fault, and with an inter­net con­nec­tion, Fanuc ser­vice engi­neers can ana­lyze and rec­ti­fy the prob­lem regard­less of loca­tion. Fanuc Diag­nos­tic Pro pro­vides fast real-time con­nec­tion to robots on the floor to pro­vide trou­bleshoot­ing and diag­nos­tic capa­bil­i­ties. This ser­vice has data mon­i­tor­ing that allows the robot’s per­for­mance to be checked, and over time, trends can be detect­ed that may require investigation.

KUKA Remote is a soft­ware pack­age for remote main­te­nance and remote con­trol of one or more robots. It can be used to mon­i­tor and diag­nose appli­ca­tion and sys­tem data, install and dis­trib­ute soft­ware and data, and car­ry out remote train­ing courses.

MyMo­toman by Motoman pro­vides the abil­i­ty to mon­i­tor a robot­ic sys­tem any­time, any­where, on any device. Cru­cial alerts, cur­rent pro­duc­tion infor­ma­tion, and pre­ven­ta­tive main­te­nance trends can all be sent through a smart­phone or PC. This infor­ma­tion will allow the cus­tomer to keep their pro­duc­tion run­ning smooth­ly and efficiently. 

At Robots​.com, we acknowl­edge that effi­cien­cy is key to suc­cess. Hav­ing the capa­bil­i­ty to mon­i­tor robots and their pro­duc­tiv­i­ty can ensure the most effi­cient work­space. Con­tact us today for more infor­ma­tion on inte­grat­ing and mon­i­tor­ing your robot­ic sys­tems; online or at 877−762−6881.