EIT Digital Announces Launch of Robot IoT Interface

EIT Digital is pleased to announce the launch of "Robot IoT Interface", a new activity being developed with the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) and Poitiers-based startup Agileo Automation with the goal of enabling different kind of robots and machines to connect to different cloud platforms.

"Robots and machines may produce data in a standard or non- standard format according to their internal controller. The devised solution is a generic gateway that can receive the produced data, translate it into an OPC-UA model and then make it available in an IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things) platform located in the cloud," Agileo's Managing Director Marc Engel says.

To achieve this Agileo, with its strong experience on developing middleware applications to control robotized production tools, will be able to benefit from the scientific expertise of the CEA which can make knowledge and technological transfer and build commercial products that fit their activities.

"The global problem that we want to address with Agileo is the interoperability within the factory of the future by investigating the different infrastructures allowing machines to machines as well as machines to clouds connection," CEA's Research Engineer Selma Azaiez explains.

Specifically, CEA will propose to Agileo to implement a gateway between the Isybot collaborative robot (born in 2016 from a CEA spin-off) and an Industrial cloud in order to develop a predictive maintenance service for the robot arm actuator.

The product will be ready for market launch by the end of 2017. Once the gateway has been created, other SMEs will be able to benefit from this solution simply by accessing the Robotic Innovation Facilities (RIF) areas of a network of European Innovation Centers that are going to be created by EIT Digital in the meantime.

"They simply have to apply for the technology and the RIF staff will help them to adopt the technology to their needs," Azaiez says.