What Is Robotics Industrial Automation &What Are the Benefits?

What Is Robotics Industrial Automation?

Robotics industrial automation is the use of robots to handle industrial processes and machinery, to effectively replace manual labor thereby improving efficiency, speed, quality, and performance.

This marriage between robotic labor and automation systems enables businesses to adjust their production and strategy based on live insights automatically.

For example, a machine shop can dynamically change its production method based on historical and live sales data. Programmable robotics and automated systems enable manufacturers to stay agile, improve their margins, and forecast demand.

Automation or Robotics

While the terms robotics and automation are often used interchangeably, both have very different roles in a modern connected factory.

Robotics

In the past, robots were single-function machines that required a high level of human direction to work smoothly. While early robotics took on physical tasks, they still lacked true intelligence to self-correct or adapt to new information.

 Modern robotics are programmable machines that can take on a wide range of tasks, and be reprogrammed if needed. Robots use sensors to understand the world around them, with sensors varying spending on the job.

 For example, autonomous guided vehicles (AGVs) use a combination of GPS, LiDAR, and radar to navigate complex environments while product picker robots use simple computer vision to identify barcodes and labels.

 Robots can completely automate tasks or act as an aid to help staff along the production line. In many cases, mundane and dangerous tasks are automated first, while helper robots work alongside humans to improve worker safety and efficiency.

Automation

Businesses can use several forms of automation to improve their productivity and efficiency. Industrial automation controls physical machines and industrial processes across the business. This level of automation relies on industrial IoT sensors to monitor environmental changes and tie automated responses with certain thresholds and conditions.

Business Process Automation (BPA) relies on data, software, and IT infrastructure to automate complex business processes. Enterprises can use BPA to streamline complex business deals with foreign companies, and reduce complexity amid legal and regulatory requirements.

Lastly, Intelligent Process Automation (IPA) uses machine learning algorithms to process data, and take on more complex tasks such as automating workflows and providing root causes analysis for issues within the business.

The Rise of Robotics and Industrial Automation

Robotics industrial automation has seen a sudden rise in adoption for a few reasons. The cost of robotics has slowly declined over the years, making physical robotic automation more accessible to more businesses.

IoT sensors that collect environmental data have also come down in price, allowing more companies to start their digital transformation initiatives based on new Industry 4.0 practices. We’ve also seen a reduction in complexity that makes implementing this technology more affordable. Central to the success of robotics automation is pervasive and more deterministic wireless connectivity 

For example, Celona offers  a turnkey private 4G/5G cellular network solution that provides the performance, privacy, and coverage needed to support enterprise robotics and automation.

Lastly, advancements in machine learning and scalable cloud computing enable anyone to harness the power of big data by simply renting service space in the cloud.

Prepping Your Business For Robotics Industrial Automation

Automation systems and robotic processes require an organized and robust network for communication that extends beyond best-effort Wi-Fi technology. Even small changes in throughput or latency can have a noticeable impact on the performance of robotic systems.

For years industrial plants relied on costly wired infrastructure to see reliable network performance. This was mostly due to wireless interference and coverage issues across large complex environments.

Today, private 5G networks allow industrial plants to completely own and control their own cellular networks, similar to how their IT department manages Wi-Fi. 5G provides robust coverage of up to a million square feet per access point to eliminate wireless dead zones both indoors and outdoors.

Unlike other wireless technologies, cellular networks are centrally controlled with wireless connections and roaming strictly scheduled by the network. This enables seamless handover for mobile devices as they move between access points across the factory floor.

With full control over cellular resources and infrastructure, businesses can integrate their cellular network into internal applications and sync service levels from their LAN to their cellular network.

For added protection against interference, the private 5g Leverages a shared spectrum mode that allows priority access licensing on the CBRS spectrum to prevent neighboring devices from impacting your cellular signals.

Celona Solution

Celona partners with industrial enterprises to provide private cellular networks for their robotics industrial automation systems.

As a part of Celona’s turnkey platform, cellular access points can be quickly deployed throughout an enterprise facility, automatically enforcing service-level objectives to individual industrial devices and process applications.

By adopting cloud networking principles, a Celona 5G LAN makes implementing private cellular wireless for IoT architecture and systems a friction-free experience. With its ability to directly integrate with enterprise network security policies, its deployment can be done alongside existing wireless and IT infrastructure, without interrupting business operations.

If you’re building your business for the future, Celona can help. Check out our private cellular wireless network planner to estimate the size of your Celona network indoors and outdoors, or test-drive a Celona 5G LAN solution.