Why VDA 5050 is doomed to fail ... to be a global standard - or how to solve Robot Collaboration

• Have you ever stopped to wonder why you can use your bank card almost anywhere in the world?
• Or been thankful that the dashboard symbols in the Japanese car you have hired in Australia are the same as in your own French car at home in Norway?
• Or noticed that you can watch video footage (MPEG) delivered via the Web on any of the different computers you have access to?*

Standards help support basic consumer protection (enshrined in the United Nations Guidelines for Consumer Protection) by helping to raise levels of quality, safety, reliability, efficiency, and interchangeability.

In general, consumers want:

• The BEST goods and services
• For the BEST value,
• Available to the MOST people

The same is true for AGV/AMR - customers. But currently, Robotics-Land is the wild-west - at least when it comes to #communication between different robots to enable #interchangeability and #interoperability. Everyone behaves according to her own rules. So it makes sense to come up with some sort of standardized communication between robots and fleet managers to:

• Enable Interoperability and mixed fleets
• Avoid vendor lock-ins
• Enable scalability
• Enable more choice and additional use cases

However, the standards that are currently in the making like #VDA5050 are regional and bureaucratic. One of the reasons for that is that many vendors regard the software to operate a fleet of robots as their core IP. Another one is that the concepts of different mobile robots and #AGVs are very different - this ranges from software architecture to designated tasks, to safety concepts,? to form factors. On lotsofbots.com over 300 different mobile robots are listed with the smallest being the size of a handbag and the biggest the size of a small house. And we barely scratched the surface of the robotic age - this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the variety of applications that is to come.

Is it realistic that there will be one global #standard to rule them all?

What we as consumers want is clear. We want to have a compatible solution landscape. If I started with an autonomous forklift I want to be able to add a cleaning robot or an automated reach truck to the fleet. Eventually, I also want to have a picking solution for small goods in the same area. Since the first vehicles are already operational I also need backward compatibility.?

As a vendor, I want to operate my vehicles to the best of their ability. So I find the right software architecture that balances the autonomy of the vehicle with a central authority to coordinate and cooperate. A lot of innovation lies in the concept of how information is propagated across my fleet for example on open tasks or changes in the layout. Each solution comes with a unique strategy that has its strengths and weaknesses.?

Different tasks require different architectures. In some cases, the peer-to-peer swarm approach might be the best solution in other cases a central authority gives very detailed driving instructions. In any case, a scalable solution needs to keep the strength of a vendor's solution and software and not limit it. Furthermore, some solutions have such a high degree of sophistication that rebuilding them in a central authority creates no value - but still a lot of work (+money).?

The answer to consumer's needs for compatibility has many solutions

1. One answer to deliver compatibility is that vendors are broadening their portfolio to become a “full-liner” and offer everything out of one hand
2. Or vendors are creating alliances of compatible solutions. They then offer a complete range of products out of a few different hands that are fully compatible.?
3. ?Or the industry agrees on standards of communication. Some examples are VDA 5050 (pushed by the German automotive association), Robot Middleware Framework (#RMF) or Massrobotics Interop (driven by US #AMR companies).
4. Or vendors decide to just publish their APIs. For example for AGILOX?relevant JSON objects can be pushed by REST API - the same is true for Mobile Industrial Robots and many others.

What people want when they ask for VDA 5050 is very different.?

It ranges from “I want to add one vehicle from another vendor to my existing fleet of 5 #AGV ” to “I want to enable a #fleet of 200 different AGV working in concert”?

While VDA 5050 provides the right answer in some cases more often than not it is not suitable because:?

• the installation becomes too expensive since the additional software is too expensive
• customers already have an installed base of AGV/AMR that doesn’t support VDA 5050 or other standards
• at the starting time of the project, it is not yet clear if in the future vehicles from other vendors will be added
• the most suitable provider does not support VDA 5050 (for example because it is a very flexible AMR)
• the customer's facility is in a region where VDA 5050 is not supported by local suppliers.?

So VDA 5050 and the other emerging standards are the right solutions in some cases (especially for large, mixed fleets in greenfield installations) none of them provides the holy grail of solving the Babylonian puzzle of interoperability.

A global citizen should speak many languages and should be able to learn new languages. As #WAKU we believe that the industry is so young that it may make total sense to define standards for a sub-set of categories like line-guided AGV (here VDA 5050 is very suitable). But to foster innovation, we need open interfaces that keep the strengths of different types of #robots/AGV. In some cases, it makes sense to connect each vehicle to a central fleet manager in other cases the fleet manager is connected to the central authority (and only virtual traffic light is provided).?

Why WAKU Sense

Imagine a customer already operates 5 MiR, and has an additional 10 GlobalAGV for the racks. Both systems run in a separate area of the #factory. Now she wants to add a super flexible AMR for ground-to-ground pallet movement to connect the MiR and the Global AGV. They run the market scan and decide on Agilox.

Both vendors MiR and GlobalAGV raise the alarm bells warning that the vehicles can’t collaborate since they would block each other. To solve the problem the vendors suggested building a custom interface between the different robots. So 3 custom interfaces need to be programmed. This is already expensive - now the customer thinks "if I now add a cleaning robot I again need to program 4 interfaces, then 5, and so on - this approach is not scalable". ?

The #integrator however suggests using WAKU Sense for the collaboration of the robots and AGVs.?

After some learning of the strengths of the solution, the vendors understand that the integration with WAKU Sense is a matter of days if not hours. They understand that it gives them the advantage that they can still operate their #fleet of vehicles with their own fleet management software if they want to. Additionally, it leaves the door open to integrate more of their vehicles in the future since they can now expand the operating area of their fleet regardless of whether other vehicles are already driving there. And that without touching the interfaces again - which solves a lot of headaches.

The customer is happy with WAKU Sense since they can now choose and add the best solution to their fleet- deciding case-by-case which vendor is most suitable. They are also happy to learn that WAKU Sense even allows tracking manual forklifts which further reduces the risks of accidents - due to virtual fences around the forklifts that are created by the software. Each Robot Operator now can see the status of the operations from their tablet and can assign jobs, or adjust the process. The management has one view that allows them to understand the performance of all the systems and processes and what can be done to improve it.?

The operator is excited and tells her peers: “You can add Safelog to a fleet of Locus Robotics, you can add Leo Locative to Tugbot and Idealworks. With WAKU Sense we have limitless possibilities to add robots to our fleets - mobile or stationary. Finally, I see how we can overcome the chronicle labor shortage.”*

WAKU Sense in a nutshell?

'WAKU Sense' is a subscription-based robot control tower. For full automation, WAKU Sense links and coordinates #automation and manual solutions. Great value is placed on ease of use, so that non-technical staff can also #monitor and optimize all processes with a single software interface.

Especially for customers who have already introduced their first AGV or AMR projects WAKU Sense allows them to easily add robots from additional vendors.

#WAKUSense simply connects to the existing fleets and ensures collaboration with the new AMRs/AGVs through traffic management. Traffic zones can be easily created, and changed or the rules can be adjusted. This means that even mixed fleets of AGVS and AMR can be integrated easily within a very short time. Numerous leading manufacturers are already connected to WAKU Sense - through the open interfaces, any standard or customized #API.

WAKU Sense thus leverages the strengths of existing fleet management systems. We do not replace the control of the vendors but leave it to the #manufacturers to play out their strengths (since the sophistication for many applications is so specific that it does not add value to overwrite them for example for swarm-picking or shelf scanning).?Though in the case of a high degree of #autonomy and simple workstreams we can coordinate robots directly - for seamless operations it is much more important to include other automation and especially manual forklifts and workers. Both working in perfect concert not only increases process efficiency but also safety in general. For this purpose, WAKU Sense offers intelligent monitoring that analyzes various data streams in order to visualize process dependencies, optimization potential, and bottlenecks. These findings are used by the #orchestration and integration layer to allow operators to flexibly edit and optimize various automation systems.

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* Vendor names are fictional and can be replaced by any other name - With WAKU Sense you can replace any #vendor name for a different brand and still get the same ease of use. That's the beauty of simplicity.

Want to learn more? Just DM me to get a demo of WAKU Sense.