Our friends at the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation (IPA) in Stuttgart, Germany built an integration enabling hands-free guidance for a mobile robot. Read on to see it in action!
“Hey LabVoice, can you bring my plate to the smart bench?”
Engineers at Fraunhofer IPA’s Innovation Center for Laboratory Automation (“nICLAS” for short) built an integration between their mobile robot Kevin and LabVoice's Digital Assistant.
These scientists-engineers used LabVoice to simplify interaction with Kevin, showing another example of automation capabilities beyond static work cells.
Previously, scientists who needed Kevin’s assistance would control the robot via keyboard commands or in pre-scripted work flows. The dynamic interaction via LabVoice allows hands free operations without requiring the scientist to remove their gloves or opening the risk for contamination. Further, it was not necessarily the most efficient way to take advantage of Kevin’s skills outside of the predetermined routines.
Using LabVoice, scientists can now call and give tasks to Kevin with their voice. When Kevin has downtime between scheduled tasks, scientists can contact Kevin to handle something unscheduled, like disposing of, dropping off, or picking up plates.
For more on the role of LabVoice in laboratory process automation, check out some of these blog posts:
And, if you're interested in learning more about the nICLAS team and/or Kevin, visit the nICLAS website, Kevin’s website or LinkedIn, or contact Michael Langner, nICLAS's Project Manager at michael.peter.langner@ipa.fraunhofer.de.