Opteran Technologies announced a partnership with SAFELOG, a global order picking and transportation robot manufacturer. SAFELOG will integrate Opteran Mind, the company’s general purpose autonomy product, with its mobile robots which operate in a range of warehouse and factory settings. With this multi-year agreement SAFELOG will address the need for greater productivity from autonomous robots operating in hazardous, dusty environments with dynamic lighting, ever changing obstacles and without GPS.
A key objective for Safelog is to reduce the failure rate of mobile robots due to localization errors in existing 2D and 3D LIDAR, and vSLAM solutions which affects productivity. This is exacerbated when hundreds of robots operate together in a warehouse setting because each installation requires an infrastructure consisting of magnetic tracks and QR codes or reflectors, increasing commissioning time and operating costs. Opteran’s localization software enables new projects to be activated quickly and efficiently without additional infrastructure.
Opteran Mind is based on research into insect brains, where the team reverse engineered natural brain algorithms. Fundamentally, nature does navigation more efficiently and by replicating its approach in a model Opteran calls Natural Intelligence, the company claims a breakthrough. It estimates its solution could cost less than $160 USD running on a Sony and ARM Core using Sony IMX219 cameras and RK4566 ARM chips. This contrasts to current state-of-the-art solutions which can range in cost from $8,400 USD for a 2D LiDAR setup to $27,000 USD for a 3D LiDAR set-up.
Photo credit: Joe Hoelzl
