On May 9, in the roundtable discussion session of the "13th Manufacturing Logistics and Warehousing Intelligent Engineering Conference and the 2nd Global Fork Mobile Robot Summit", Li Jinke, Secretary General of the Mobile Robot Industry Alliance, Gao Peng, head of the intelligent manufacturing platform intelligent logistics project of Foxconn Technology Group, Liu Shiping, senior planner of Xinwangda Intelligent Logistics, Gong Rixin, logistics manager of Xiaotiancai Technology, Ma Jianliang, general manager of KUKA mobile robots, Wang Yong, director of international robotics today, and Sun Yu, general manager of Shanghai Jiyu Intelligence, focused on " Hot topics such as "standard and non-standard trends in logistics automation and intelligence" and "development pain points and trends of small integration of mobile robots", end users and mobile robot manufacturers face to face, discuss the balanced development of mobile robot standardization and non-standard, and explore intelligent upgrade paths and successful experiences.
The key to the development of small integration of mobile robots is to solve unified scheduling
In recent years, with the diversification of production and manufacturing and the customized development of market demand, the hybrid scheduling and collaborative operation of multiple robots of various manufacturers in the same space and environment have become a trend, and each manufacturer has different ways of dealing with the underlying AGV monomer and scheduling system, and the relatively closed monolithic area leads to the formation of data islands. How to crack the data island, realize the efficient collaboration between "single" intelligence and "group" intelligence, and balance the development of standardization and customization is a difficult problem that the industry urgently needs to solve.
Liu Shiping, senior planner of Sunwoda intelligent logistics
Liu Shiping, senior planner of Sunwoda Intelligent Logistics, talked about the current difficulties from the perspective of terminal application in the lithium battery industry: "For our users, we hope to ensure that the data can be used quickly and indefinitely in the current business system. At present, the types of software that come with the hardware are different or uneven, resulting in data islands, which is one of the pain points in the development of small integration of mobile robots. Therefore, we are also thinking about how to ensure that all data and equipment are fully used in the entire logistics system or supply chain. In short, the interface of the various device manufacturers is standardized, which is what we want. ”
Today Wang Yong, Director of International Robotics
Today, Wang Yong, director of international robotics, also talked about the current problems: "Many of the customer's projects are purchased in phases, and not necessarily the same supplier wins the bid every time, so there will be a situation where the same company uses different AGVs and scheduling systems. This is ostensibly a problem with the scheduling system, but in fact, it is caused by the different ways in which various mobile robot manufacturers deal with the underlying AGV monomer and the AGV scheduling system. ”
As for the difficulty of promoting the unification of scheduling, he said: "The profit division point of AGV is concentrated in this part of scheduling. If a company has made a scheduling system that encompasses all AGVs, it means that the profits are monopolized, and the competitiveness of other companies will inevitably be weakened, which is not conducive to the development of a single machine. ”
Secondly, he believes that although the alliance has also issued corresponding standards, the formulation of these standards is still a long way to go to comprehensively solve the problem of unified scheduling. "Because the standard can only be a basic standard, but it cannot be refined to every scenario and every application, so the manufacturers of each AGV will have some margin. For example, through a platform, the total scheduling of robot clusters can be basically realized, but for the supply chain procurement of spare parts, under the unified scheduling, a unified standard may still not be achieved. Wang Yong said.
Gong Rixin, logistics manager of Little Genius Technology
In addition to the problem of unified scheduling of AGV, Gong Rixin, logistics manager of Xiaotiancai Technology, also mentioned the safety monitoring of AGV batteries: "The warehouse where AGV operates is a place with high safety requirements. For the safety of AGV lithium batteries, we currently need corresponding monitoring measures or indicators to avoid the occurrence of extreme fire safety accidents. This is a strong condition and premise for the realization of small integration of mobile robots. ”
Gao Peng, head of the smart logistics project of Foxconn Technology Group's intelligent manufacturing platform
Regarding the above series of problems that plague the industry inside and outside, Gao Peng, head of the intelligent manufacturing platform smart logistics project of Foxconn Technology Group, said: "In fact, the ecology of the alliance is constantly improving, and the current problems that the industry is worried about may become business opportunities, and enterprises that can seize business opportunities will gradually join our ecosystem and achieve corner overtaking." ”
The unified scheduling of the upper layer forces the monomer intelligence to continue to sink
In the face of the difficulties of standardization and unified scheduling in the development of the terminal application industry and the mobile robot industry, how should we deal with it? In the future, what is the trend of standardization and non-standard in the mobile robot industry? What are the real needs of end application vendors? How should enterprises balance the rhythm of single intelligent sinking?
The scheduling work is mainly divided into two parts, one is traffic control, and the other is task management. Each manufacturer has different scheduling methods for the task management part, and it is more difficult to achieve unified task management, so to achieve unified scheduling, now the real thing to open is in the "traffic control" part. Therefore, Wang Yong suggested that traffic management should be integrated to meet the most basic needs of customers, and then gradually deepen the scheduling of task management. However, under a huge scheduling system, it will take a long time to carry out unified task management for each AGV and achieve real scheduling unity.
Ma Jianliang, General Manager of KUKA Mobile Robots
"The problem of standardization and non-standard is not only a pain point for users, but also the biggest pain point for our practitioners." As for promoting standardization, Ma Jianliang, General Manager of KUKA Mobile Robots, said, "First of all, in terms of business selection, practitioners can focus on some vertical industries and penetrate them to form some relatively standard solutions. Secondly, the entire application scenario can also be disassembled into sub-scenarios and then relatively standardized one by one, for example, each factory basically has sub-scenarios such as sheet metal, accommodation, line-side warehouse, and line-side basement for final assembly, which can actually be relatively standardized. Furthermore, from the perspective of the enterprise, our enterprise itself should achieve the standardization of mobile platforms and core technology elements, and on this basis, combine with the customer's on-site application to do customization, differentiation or corresponding standardization. Finally, we need to solve the problem of unified scheduling and standardization from the dimension of the alliance and the dimension of the country. It is hoped that it can be connected with internationalization, and the whole industry will pay attention to EHS standards and safety standards together to establish industry norms. ”
Sun Yu, General Manager of Shanghai Jiyu Intelligence
Sun Yu, general manager of Shanghai Jiyu Intelligence, introduced the practice of promoting standardization in Isoyu Intelligence: "The standardization and unified scheduling I understand is actually a process of 'adding water to more surfaces, and adding more water to noodles'. We will incorporate some of our knowledge into the research and development of scheduling systems, such as the scheduling system we are using now, which is a system based on contracts and bidding, and its core business logic is built to quantify the difference between the prediction output of the machine learning algorithm and the actual target value through the loss function, and then use the low-code platform to achieve delivery through graphical modeling. As a small enterprise, it is very cost-sensitive, so non-standard delivery has become a relatively standardized solution, which is exactly what we are currently doing. I believe that heterogeneous collaboration, coupling different devices in a scenario, is not only a major trend for future development, but also a challenge for our manufacturers, and a necessary skill for future survival and development. ”
Gao Peng said: "For our users, it is not about how deep the scheduling system is integrated, but about solving the basic pain points of users first. First, the mixed field is mobilized, and then gradually enters the scheduling of "task issuance", and finally the linkage with other equipment layers, in this process, Foxconn Group will also gradually promote it with the alliance. ”
"Foxconn is in a transition stage, and international products will be the second use case for Foxconn Group, and it is also constantly promoting EV. In the future, our joint venture automakers in the U.S., Mexico, and Thailand will have our EV business. Gao Peng said, "At this stage, there are not only hardware integration and system integration in China, but also after-sales service integrators like Pingyun Xiaojiang, which is a good phenomenon and trend." Here, we at Foxconn also sincerely welcome all excellent integrators, AGV manufacturers and OEMs to provide services for us and help us solve the problems of standardization and later international cooperation. ”
Liu Shiping said: "Actually, our request is very simple, there are only two words - openness. At present, we have nearly a dozen bases at home and abroad in the large-scale use of robots, involving a wide variety of AGVs, in this case, the traffic control and route scheduling of the equipment to an equipment manufacturer to do, in fact, it is difficult to achieve unified scheduling. Therefore, we hope to realize the opening of equipment, and can obtain the core elements of equipment - intent, route and execution data, and then through unified coding and unified scheduling, sub-regional management, from internal logistics to external logistics, and gradually pull through the entire production line, greatly improving the overall storage and transportation efficiency. ”
Gong Rixin said: "In fact, the current AGV products can basically meet the needs of most scenarios, but there is still room for improvement in software intelligence, such as the deep combination of WMS and RCS systems to help robots accurately and quickly complete tasks and achieve efficient collaborative operation of group integration." ”
For the future trend, Wang Yong believes that with the advancement of standardization and the development of AGV technology, the trend of unified scheduling will force AGV suppliers to move their own deep technology or leading technology down to the AGV stand-alone, AGV stand-alone functions will be more complete, and with the development of vision and AI technology, the computing power of the controller will gradually improve, and the future on-board controller will be an important competition point. At present, the architecture of AGV stand-alone on-board controllers that are common in the market may undergo some revolutionary subversions.
Ma Jianliang also agreed with Wang Yong's point of view, and he proposed that the sinking of stand-alone intelligence must be the trend of the entire industry. "The application of all artificial intelligence technology can not only take into account the upper-level intelligence in the scheduling system or management, nor can all the intelligence be sunk, otherwise it will derive new problems such as excessive cost, but should be moderated in the product side to bring new improvements." He also mentioned that in addition to the above-mentioned standardization and open requirements, users' pursuit of high efficiency and low cost is also an urgent problem to be solved at this stage. He said that in any case, meeting the actual needs of current users is an ideal solution, and it is also the direction that our company needs to stick to.
Sun Yu said: "I particularly agree with the logic of openness, because the core of the current situation of "each in charge of its own" is that there is no consensus in the industry, that is, there is no consensus on the entire system construction of CMS. Therefore, in the end, if the scheduling can be unified, it must be because the industry has formed a consensus to unify, but this goal may not be achieved so quickly, and it is necessary to wait for more advanced technologies to emerge to unify the entire scheduling model. Sun Yu believes that the trend of standardization and openness is inevitable, and proposes that the technical paradigm of humanoid robots has subverted the paradigm of second-class equipment such as AGV/AMR currently used, and its industry value should not be underestimated and the trend is irreversible. In the future, humanoid robots, like new energy vehicles, will become a huge and potential track.
Li Jinke, Secretary-General of the Mobile Robot Industry Alliance, said: "The Alliance has been committed to taking into account the different demands of industry enterprises, promoting the formulation of industry standards related to mobile robots, and providing strong technical specification support for the innovation of industry technologies and products. At present, the national standard of "Data Interface Requirements for Mobile Robot Dispatching System for Industrial Applications" has been launched and entered the drafting stage, and we hope to participate in the establishment of national standards with many enterprises to help the sustainable and healthy development of China's mobile robot industry. ”
Li Jinke, Secretary General of the Mobile Robot Industry Alliance