The Benefits of Remote Control Capabilities for Industrial Robots

Before we understand how remote control of robots can help automation, it helps to recognize that there is some confusion about what the term actually means. To most, “remote control” means troubleshooting from a distance. To a smaller but significant subset, the term implies teleoperation, controlling the movement of a robot, especially one working in hazardous conditions, from a distance.

The two use cases occasionally overlap — when troubleshooting needs teleoperation. Fredrik Ryden, CEO of Olis Robotics, says remote control includes the ability to see videos and telemetry live while fine-tuning certain pre-defined runtime parameters (IOs, registers, tags). “This also includes the ability to reposition a robot arm or actuator through teleoperation in cases as risk assessment allows,” he says. Olis enables remote monitoring, control, and troubleshooting of new and legacy industrial robots and offers teleoperation as simply one of many advanced remote control tools.

For the purposes of this article, we assume that remote control implies remote intervention or troubleshooting.

The rise of remote troubleshooting

While labor shortages were already prompting the move toward remote troubleshooting of robotic systems, it’s quite possible that the COVID-19 pandemic, with its enforced social distancing rules, accelerated adoption.

The numbers reflect a growing enthusiasm for remote monitoring and control systems: In 2020, the global market for related products registered at $23 billion USD, according to Research and Markets. The firm forecasts demand to grow at a robust 5.4% compounded annual growth rate to hit $31.7 billion by 2026.

The pandemic notwithstanding, the primary motivator for remote intervention has typically been a lack of adequate skilled robotics talent, Ryden says. The shortage of talent has especially come into sharp focus as the growth of manufacturing reshoring has meant increasing automation, which in turn has made the demand for robot experts more pressing.

Reshoring of manufacturing is an ongoing trend, bringing manufacturing back to the United States, and reversing years of offshoring momentum. The first half of 2023 saw nearly 300,000 new U.S. jobs due to businesses’ reshoring activity and direct foreign investments. And while automation is laying the foundation for the reshoring trend, not all automation is wrinkle-free.

When robots go offline, they can bring down entire production lines, and costs of downtime add up quickly. The availability of skilled roboticists who can troubleshoot problems is becoming a bottleneck to the adoption of automation, and quite possibly, to reshoring. “You’re starting to hear that manufacturers can’t grow existing installations or adopt automation as fast as they need to because of this current labor shortage that we have,” Ryden says.

The answer to this problem: remote control of robots.

How remote troubleshooting works

When systems go down, most of the diagnostic investigation can be done remotely. “The idea is that you essentially take the robot out of the day-to-day work of welding or palletizing and you essentially put it in a remote-controlled state,” Ryden says. Handing over the controls can enable a robotics expert to then check different functions and test whether the gripper or other parts are working as they should, while adhering to safety protocols.

Video-based diagnostics capabilities enable experts to easily go back and review the root-cause of an ongoing downtime event and to compare it to similar incidents, maybe even months or years back, Ryden says. Such root-cause analysis is invaluable as it enables faster and more accurate resolution of problems.

Key to such remote diagnostics is an industrial PC that connects to robot controllers over a regular network cable or an Ethernet connection. The PC box serves as a repository for information, collecting video, and data logs, useful for spotting and tracking errors. Having the visual feed from a camera is a big bonus for remote control because video data is an effective complement to data logs.

The controller need not be online, it simply collects data until systems go down. When needed, IT teams can enable remote connectivity, and a robot expert can log in to the controller and review data logs to zero in on the problem and fix it. “The key thing is we don’t really care how it gets done, we just need to provide the robotics experts with access to the data they need to make very quick decisions,” Ryden says.

Other implementations of remote control involve live streaming of time-stamped video data which not only helps with troubleshooting but also helps manufacturers adopt a more proactive predictive maintenance approach rather than a reactive one, says Steve Barsanti, VP Customer Operations at Rapid Robotics, a robotics-as-a-service company. Rapid livestreams data into its central monitoring dashboard and sometimes catches brewing problems even before floor operators do, Barsanti says.

The advantages of remote control of robots

There’s a reason why remote troubleshooting of robotic systems is becoming increasingly popular. A few of the many reasons include:

• More judicious use of talent

Remote control of robots eliminates (or at least lowers) the talent barrier. Having a roboticist on call for multiple sites helps enterprises use experts more effectively.

• More transparency

Having detailed logs, including video records, which is an important aspect of remote control, makes problems easier to pinpoint. It eliminates some of the trial-and-error guesswork usually related to troubleshooting.

• Decreased downtime

Stalled robot operations can snowball into massive production floor delays and expensive increased downtime. Being able to control and troubleshoot the robot remotely helps bring operations back up and running faster. “Time is money when it comes to production. Every minute that those work cells are down, they’re losing money. So being able to troubleshoot and bring the robot back into production quickly, is vital,” Barsanti says.

• Lower costs

Expertise is expensive. Having an expert fly out to a worksite is even more so. With remote control “you can have faster access to someone who actually understands what’s going on with the robot,” Barsanti says. Remote access increases chances of better outcomes — at lower costs.

• Predictive maintenance

Companies which enable live-streamed data can harness AI and machine learning algorithms to constantly monitor robot health and be warned of potential breakdowns even before problems arise. Such proactive predictive maintenance almost entirely eliminates expensive downtime.

• Democratization of automation

Companies wary of adopting automation without a clear map for related support services can lean on remote control as a standby. “When you’re investing in a big piece of automation you have to have a certainty that you can keep it running for some years. Being able to access support, even if remotely, effectively unblocks barriers to investment in automation,” Ryden says.

The technology ecosystem bolstering remote control

Despite the many advantages of remote control of robots, a few technological advances have had to click into place to enable the process. After all, industrial robots are not new but for most of the time they have been deployed, they have been working in somewhat of a vacuum, Barsanti says.

But that has changed with the growth of three technologies: the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT); cloud computing; and AI.

IIoT delivers data about machines. Sensors and an ability for machines to relay information about various operating parameters has meant that operators can now use IIoT to better understand machine health. Traditionally, experienced production floor operators knew something was wrong simply by listening to the machine, which is a problem as information remains siloed with a select few.

Cloud computing and related SaaS software makes data more accessible. Site managers with an internet connection can log in and receive updates about machines that the IIoT data has processed. Finally, AI makes sense of the data. It runs the data through algorithms and delivers meaningful insights that operators can use to optimize operations.

The world of robotics itself is evolving at breakneck speed. Don He, CEO of Henrich, provider of machine-machine communication systems, sees wireless robots and the demand for 5G increasing.

And Arshan Poursohi, CEO of Third Wave Automation, is excited about the future of autonomous robots. Third Wave builds shared autonomy solutions for palletization functions and started with forklifts because it’s a well-constrained environment. “Warehouses are largely the same wherever you go, so it’s a good place to start,” Poursohi says. He is excited about the prospects of expanding the idea of shared autonomy to additional industrial environments, including semi-constrained ones.

The democratization of automation

For now, it’s not surprising that remote control of robots is taking off. “We have chopped off a vast majority of the problems by being able to handle them remotely and it’s had a huge impact on our ability to support our customers in a cost-effective and fast way,” Barsanti says.

And those customers run the gamut. “It’s been surprising how similar the needs are across machine-tending, packaging, palletizing, large and small all the way up to the most complex production lines,” Ryden says.

The democratization of automation that remote control of robots delivers, is worth watching. “It takes a fair amount of technical expertise to be comfortable with buying and operating automation. Coming up with a way of buying and selling automation where we essentially take the risk out of it, is what’s going to move the needle for the industry as a whole,” Ryden says.