2022-Korea-Showcase-Veo-Robotics

ALBERTO MOEL: Hi. My name is Alberto Moel and I'm the VP of Strategy and Partnerships at Veo Robotics. We are building the future of manufacturing through safeguarding for human-robot collaboration. The MIT connection is that the CEO and co-founder has a bachelor's, master's, and PhD in double E from MIT, and so do I.

So manufacturing requirements continue to increase, with shorter product cycles and higher product variability. And to keep pace with market trends, manufacturing must become more flexible. So at Veo, we strongly believe the future of manufacture is dynamic, flexible, human-machine collaboration. Over the last five years, we've developed and commercialized our product, called FreeMove, a vision system to make manufacturing more flexible by improving human-machine collaboration.

So FreeMove is a comprehensive 3D analysis and decision system that makes factory spaces intelligent and aware. FreeMove uses advanced 3D vision hardware and software to enable a safe and safety-rated human-robot collaboration. So our system is basically a four-step process. We capture three-point cloud data imaging the manufacturing work cell.

The data is fused into a semantic representation of the work cell, including robot work pieces, other elements of the work cell, and the humans in the work cell. As the robot and human move in the work cell, FreeMove determines if a safe distance between the robot and human exists. And if distances between the human and the robot is shorter than allowed by the speed and separation monitoring standards of ISO 13849, FreeMove will slow down or stop the robot safely. And then when the hazard has been removed, it would restart the robot. The sensing intelligence is performed safely in real time under the standard of the ISO 10218 and ISO 13849 standards.

So FreeMove consists of both hardware and software, including safety rated 3D time of flight sensors we've designed and a dual pipeline safe computation engine. The product is safety certified and is available in volume right now. We are covered by 20 issued patents and another 74 patents pending-- so quite a bit of technology has gone into this.

With FreeMove, humans and large industrial robots can share the same space, performing tasks for which they're best suited. FreeMove supports the four major robot brands-- FANUC, Yaskawa, KUKA, and ABB. We can support other brands as necessary, given commercial requirements.

So I'm going to show you a video of our system in action. Here is Clara Vu, our CTO and co-founder. This is a clothes dryer. Here's the imaging of what the robot is seeing. Sees Clara step into the area.

The robot then stops and allows Clara to do a task that is best suited for a human-- in this case, putting the feet on the dryer. It's a very complicated step for a robot to do, or a machine. But then the robot can then move the part so she can ergonomically add the two other feet to the dryer.

This is, again, a robot-- to automate this process is quite difficult. But for a human, it's very easy. Then when the process is completed, she can then proceed to putting in an even more complicated step, which is the lint filter on the dryer.

Automating this step, again, is very expensive, difficult. For a human, it's very easy. So you have the human do the parts they can do best, and the robot to do the things it can do best, like carry the big part around, then allowing Clara to finish the process. And the robot can then take the dryer back to the assembly line.

So another example is palletizing. This is with a very large global consumer packaged goods company. This customer was-- they'd been palletizing by hand.

And you can see on the upper left, they were basically carrying stuff around and putting it on pallets by hand, putting the boxes on the pallets. This is because of the diversity and variability of the pallets being assembled and the space requirements for the palletizing application. So the company considered using a fully robotic palletizer-- you can see in the middle.

Very expensive, lots of fences, lots of inflexible automation to do that work. And then using a cobot, a PFL robot, or a cobot, which you can see down there-- these robots are human-safe. You can be next to the robot very safely.

However, to make them safe, you have to make them slow and have very low payloads. So those are not very efficient robots. And then they considered the Veo solution, which you can see up on the right.

And so we've run the system. And if you actually look at the outcomes, it's quite clear that the Veo system is far superior to the alternatives. Of the four options-- the manual, fully automated, cobot palletizer, or the Veo FreeMove-- it was clear the Veo FreeMove solution had the best return on investment.

Its cycle time was as fast as that of the fully automated palletizer. But the investment payback was half. And the implementation time was much shorter, as you can see in the time table there.

Compared to the PFL robot palletizer, it was three times as fast as the cobot palletizer even when the cobot palletizer was fitted with a safety area scanner that would allow this cobot to run at faster speeds than fully human collaborate mode speeds. So it's very clear what our system can do for our customer.

I'm going to show you a quick video here of that. And here basically you can see the three operations at the same time. On the left, you see the cobot slowly building the pallet. In the middle, you see the cobot running at faster speeds with a scanner that allows for the robot to slow down or stop as the humans come in and out.

So it allows the cobot to run faster than the fully manual and fully human-safe mode on the left. And on the right, we have an ABB robot running much faster, but in the way that as soon as you approach it, the robot actually stops. And when you step back, the robot starts again, allowing for the palletizer to run much faster.

You can see right here we're already a minute in. And the ABB robot has already put down four rows of boxes. The other ones are still trying to find their way to the second or third row of boxes.

And the full cycle time to do a pallet, you can see on the cobot, is six minutes. For the cobot plus the scanner, it's half of that-- pretty good, three minutes. And then our system actually does another half of that. So if you consider the economics of something like that, it's actually quite impressive.

So what is our ask in Korea? Basically, we have a very strong interest in the Korean market. Korea is a major end market for robotics, large industrial robots.

We estimate that 20% of our market is in Korea itself, and another 10% in Korean companies outside. We have a fair number of Korean companies we've been talking to, but we'd like to expand that opportunity. We would like to establish a Korean presence in 2023, the next year, and establish relationships with Korean trade promotions and agencies to proceed.

And we're also looking for system integrators to help us develop the market here in Korea, and customers-- end customers. Our customers right now in the world, worldwide, include automotive, automotive supply chain, white goods, aerospace, machinery, and logistics end markets. So those are the kinds of customers we're looking for.

Again, thank you very, very much. Do not hesitate to contact me at the am@veobot.com or at the exhibit. I'll be over there answering questions and talking to people. Thank you.

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