Zooming in on Autonomous Robot Integration

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Robotic integration for energy companies and other industrial facilities is on the move—literally moving around facilities as well as moving fast on new developments. 

One integrator, Yokogawa, is working toward offering robotics as a service (RaaS), with streamlined networking, implementation, and management. So far, Yokogawa integrates robots from ANYbotics, Boston Dynamics, Mitsubishi Heavy Industry (MHI), and ExRobotics to companies’ industrial automation (IA) systems. 

Yokogawa Robotics Integration, or YoRoI for short, is in several facilities around the world, with successful proofs of concept in its repertoire, including: 

  • Integrating Spot and ExR robots with Yokogawa’s operations management (OM) system, where work instructions are transmitted to the robots just as easily as to field operators

  • Detecting anomalies and accurately reading gauges through autonomous inspection robots and AI computer vision analysis

  • Sending alarms from an IA system through Yokogawa’s CI Server to direct a robot to the corresponding alarmed location, where the robot can autonomously navigate as well as be manually controlled to conduct further investigation

  • Scheduling robots to gather information and detect anomalies such as liquid leakage and discoloration

“We entered the robotics business because we believe in the future capabilities of robots and AI and their contributions to autonomous operations,” said Sandra Fabiano, Engineering Manager at Yokogawa. “The pandemic has only solidified our expectation of our customers’ needs.”

Yokogawa works on an “integration-first” approach, seamlessly wrapping robotics into a facility to achieve end-to-end data connectivity. In facilities using these integrations, work instructions can be assigned to robots or humans, enabling a smooth transition from fully manual to fully robotic processes with less change management effort.  This is essential to enable a seamless transition from today’s automation to tomorrow’s autonomous operations. 

Many facilities moving toward robotic integration still have questions and challenges. Yokogawa said the most common of these include:

  • Data security

  • Safe behavior on stairs or during abnormal circumstances

  • Ability of robots to complete missions without fail

  • Lack of standardization in robot hardware and software

  • Balancing trust and human oversight in the move to automation

Open ecosystems, networking challenges, robot manipulation capabilities, and more still exist as challenges to fully autonomous operations, but Yokogawa and other integrators have demonstrated the potential in industrial environments. 

h/t Sandra Fabiano, Engineering Manager at Yokogawa