Industrial Robots-as-a-Service (IRaaS) - Resilient and responsive manufacturing systems enabled by rapidly deployable mobile robots

当前的自动化依赖于大批量应用，具有可预测的市场需求和稳定的产品变体。对于新兴市场和全球市场的公司来说，很难采用自动化并保持对市场变化的响应；其结果是，需要做出反应的企业被迫采用成本更高的人工方法，或者依赖工资较低经济体的离岸制造。为了解决这个问题，英国制造业需要更灵敏的自动化。该项目将研究如何减少部署和重新利用通用的现成机器人和移动自主平台的工作量，并为它们提供与人类和其他机器人合作的能力。这将为使用工业机器人即服务（IRaaS）提供基础。IRaaS模型将允许制造商快速响应以满足不断变化的市场需求，动态组织工作以最大限度地提高生产率，并减少受到任何突然冲击和系统故障的影响。这将增强熟练劳动力的能力，他们将通过响应人类定义的生产需求的自动化来实现。IRaaS模式还将为产品服务系统带来固有的关键优势。从可靠性的角度来看，系统将具有弹性，因为故障机器人可以很容易地被替换；从财务角度来看，该模式将通过启用基于订阅的服务来消除对大量资本投资的需求；从环境的角度来看，它将实现可持续制造概念，如维修、再利用和再制造，消除单片自动化设备退役的浪费和成本。

Current automation is reliant on large volume applications, with predictable market demands and stable product variants. For companies in emerging and global markets, it is difficult to adopt automation and remain responsive to market changes; as a result companies that need to be responsive are forced to adopt more expensive manual approaches, or rely on off-shore manufacturing in lower wage economies. To address this, UK manufacturing needs more responsive automation.This project will investigate means to reduce the effort of deploying and repurposing generic off-the-shelf robots and mobile autonomous platforms, and provide them with the ability to work in teams with people and other robots. This will provide the foundation to use Industrial Robots-as-a-Service (IRaaS). The IRaaS model will allow manufacturers to quickly respond to meet the demands of changing markets, dynamically organise work to maximise their productivity, and be less exposed to any sudden shocks and system failures. This will augment the capability of the skilled human workforce who will be enabled by automation that is responsive to human-defined production needs. The IRaaS model will also bring the key benefits inherent to product service systems. From a reliability perspective, the system will be resilient as malfunctioning robots can easily be replaced; from a financial perspective, the model will remove the need for large capital investment by enabling subscription based services; and from an environmental perspective, it will enable sustainable manufacturing concepts such as repair, re-use and re-manufacture, eliminating the waste and cost of decommissioning monolithic automation equipment.