Summary
The challenge
In 2022, Posti asked ABB’s value provider partner Roboco to help boost productivity by automating and optimizing its parcel sorting operations. This large, challenging project involved close co-operation between four partners – the client, Posti; the integrator, Roboco; the robotics provider, ABB Robotics; and the AI lab, AMD Silo AI. The resulting complexity threatened to make it prohibitively time consuming to develop a solution using physical testing alone.
The solution
Building a virtual test environment using RobotStudio® enabled everyone involved in the project to work together remotely as a team. The accuracy of the virtual model allowed engineers to test the interactions between the robot hardware, the application software from Roboco, and the bespoke AI and 3D computer vision systems developed by AMD Silo AI before deploying any physical equipment.
The application
By working together in the virtual environment of RobotStudio®, developers from all the project partners could cooperate seamlessly on the latest version of the robotic solution in real time. This reduced the time taken to design and test the new system by several months. Today, Posti is successfully using a robotic solution that is 99 percent aligned with the virtual system developed in RobotStudio®.
When the Finnish postal operator Posti approached Roboco to provide an automated solution for parcel sorting, development and testing was expected to be one of the biggest challenges.
“We were the robot technology provider in this joint project between Posti, our value provider partner Roboco and Europe’s largest AI lab, AMD Silo AI,” says Juha Mainio, Area Sales Manager for ABB Robotics. “Testing of the system was recognized to be very challenging, because building the real test environment would have taken too much time before actual testing could have been started.”
Using RobotStudio® enabled Roboco to pick the right industrial robots from ABB’s portfolio and, crucially, to test how the robotic system responded to the bespoke software being developed by AMD Silo AI. Using RobotStudio, a virtual model was created of the application, with the software’s virtual controller feature enabling communication with AMD Silo AI’s AI and vision system.
Enabling users from any location to quickly access files, view simulations and make and share any changes in real time, RobotStudio Cloud greatly simplified the process of developing and testing the automated parcel sorting solution.
“We used 3D scanning and AI to generate lots of synthetic parcels and our developers were then able to test their software using a virtual robot system in RobotStudio® Cloud,” says Mikko Lauri, Senior AI Scientist with AMD Silo AI. “Thanks to RobotStudio® Cloud, we could also work on the very latest version of our AI and 3D computer vision system integrated with the robot system in real time.”
“I would say we saved several months by developing and testing the system and all the software in RobotStudio®,” says Roboco founder Oskari Hakaluoto. “For us as the overall project co-ordinator, having the virtual environment based in the cloud was crucial to ensure that engineers from the different project partners were always working on the same version of the evolving solution.”
Posti is now enjoying a significant real-world boost in productivity from its new robotic sorting solution, which is 99 percent in line with the virtual model developed in RobotStudio®.
To find out more about RobotStudio® Cloud, including how it works and the benefits it can deliver, visit our portal page.
