R&D

“Computers in 1978 are where mobile robots were in 2001.” - Dr. Rodney Brooks, CTO of iRobot Corp  

R&D Scenario
Features and Benefits
Case Study

R&D Scenario

Ah, the thrills of discovery!

You live for that moment... the moment when countless hours of brainstorming, formulating hypotheses, figuring out puzzles, writing line after line of code, debugging... all come to end, and you turn on that switch...

But wait!

First you have to write that proposal and ask your department for funding. You ask, cajole, argue, beg, write a letter to the Chair... and even then, all you end up with is a half-baked robot platform that you have to spend hours modifying to fit your needs.

No more.

Now you can have a solid platform that brings you:

• A four foot chassis
• Standard PC with real CPU horsepower
• 8" touch screen LCD
• Canon PTZ camera with 26x optical zoom
• A full day of runtime

And best of all, its affordable.

Please follow this link for full specifications.

Features and Benefits

• A four foot chassis
• Standard PC with real CPU horsepower
• 8" touch screen LCD
• Canon PTZ camera with 26x optical zoom
• A full day of runtime

Case Study

At the request of the company that is the basis of this study, we have changed the names of people and the company mentioned here. All other information is accurate and factual.

Tanta is a Microsoft-certified solution provider that works closely with its clients to provide "right-sized" IT solution that minimize risk by taking advantage of COTS (Commercial Off the Shelf) with a unique blend of customized application development. One of their specialties is delivering solutions for robotics and unmanned systems to a variety of government, enterprise, and research-oriented organizations. To speed application development for mobile robotic systems they have even developed their own "vanilla flavored" mobile robot named TantaBot that combines standard PC components which standardize the application/solution development process by enabling Tanta to use widely available coding tools and taking advantage of enormous intellectual property assets they have already developed. Recently Tanta was hired to develop a mobile robot application that would track warehouse inventory using RFID readers as well as visual inventory confirmation. One of the client's constraints on the project was that they needed a proof of concept that could quantifiably demonstrate the feasibility of using a mobile robot to achieve all objectives of the inventory system. While the TantaBot would had provided a good platform for developing this application and demonstrating the software's capability to deliver on functionalities specified by the client, there was still a need for a mobile robot that could demonstrate the achievement of the client's objectives in a real world setting. Specifically the concern was that the robot they were targeting for deployment had a number of proprietary systems that would make porting Tanta's application an enormous and costly pain.

Having worked with RoboDynamics on multiple projects in the past, Tanta asked us to provide them with one of our TiLR prototypes so that they could demonstrate this application to the decision-making stake holders of their client. By the time we were approached, the development cycle was coming to an end and Tanta's clients were concerned that they would not be able to demonstrate the application to their boss' satisfaction who had otherwise warned that they would kill the project. Once TiLR was delivered to Tanta, it took less than 15 man-hours to port the application over and testing was underway. TiLR's blend of COTS and simple architecture enabled Tanta's development team to feel so confident that they setup their first demo to the client within one week of receiving TiLR. As Jeff Kratz put it, "the port was so straight forward that we weren't even nervous about meeting with the client's bosses".

The demo went so successful that the client immediately signed on with Tanta to create a full-fledged system that would eventually become the inventory management system for their largest West Coast warehouse. As for Tanta, the ability to port the application with little effort and provide a successful demo to the client meant a stronger relationship with the client, an extended contract, and even some new contracts that are non-robot related.