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Wistron Corporation has officially launched a service robot named Wisbot in May, 2021, which provides a range of service functions for different scenes, such as shopping malls, hospitals, schools, and hotels. It unleashes the potential in applications and business opportunities.
Picture this scenario in a shopping mall
When you can not find the products you are looking for on the shelves. The service robot which is checking the inventory of the shelves will guide you to the right shelf. It can also identify your age and promote the products you might be interested in. Once you get all the goods you want to purchase, you can easily complete the payment via the touch screen, barcode scanner and credit card reader on the service robot.
The technology of AMR (Autonomous Mobile Robot) evolves rapidly. The above shopping experience is entering our life. Wistron collaborated with ADLINK to build Wisbot, a service robot, offering various functions and business opportunities for retail, healthcare, education and hospitality industries.
“With years’ ODM experience, Wistron have built up a number of core technologies and strong integration capabilities. We leverage the solid R&D capabilities and strategic alliances to create robots for different application scenarios.” shared Chen Si Yin, Director of Wistron’s Smart Products Business Group.
“With years’ ODM experience, Wistron have built up a number of core technologies and strong integration capabilities. We leverage the solid R&D capabilities and strategic alliances to create robots for different application scenarios.” shared Chen Si Yin, Director of Wistron’s Smart Products Business Group.
Challenges of Service Robot Development
In terms of the service robot’s design, it is divided into top and bottom parts. The bottom part is equipped with movement, navigation, and obstacle avoidance functions. The upper part provides different value added applications depending on the usage context.
Wistron’s shopping mall service robots are equipped with four 3D cameras and perform multiple AI inference tasks at the same time. The service robot can accurately and swiftly identify the goods on the shelves, estimate restocking time, notify staff to correct misplaced goods, perform facial recognition and promote recommended commodity on the screen for shoppers.
In order to perform so many various tasks, this service robot requires powerful computing capabilities to perform multiple tasks including path planning, visual recognition, and communication with the backend all at the same time.
ROS 2-based Service Robots
Speeding up the time to market by adopting ROS 2 and Intel’s technologies
“The bottom robotic platform is the part that requires most computing resources, and it needs to be equipped with a variety of sensors such as lidar and radar to map out the moving path and avoid obstacles. This is the reason why we partner with ADLINK.” said Huang Chi Ta Deputy Director of Wistron .
“The bottom robotic platform is the part that requires most computing resources, and it needs to be equipped with a variety of sensors such as lidar and radar to map out the moving path and avoid obstacles. This is the reason why we partner with ADLINK.” said Huang Chi Ta Deputy Director of Wistron .
Being as a turnkey solution, ADLINK’s ROScube-I Fanless Robotic Controller combines Intel’s powerful processors, ROS 2 (Robot Operating System) as well as abundant connectivity I/O. The elimination of software and hardware integration not only speeds up the time to market, but also enables the R&D team to focus on the development of AI applications on the upper half of the robot.
Compared to some robot designs that use two computers to support the upper and lower halves’ computing demands, ADLINK’s ROScube-I is able to satisfy all the functional requirements on a single platform including path planning, visual recognition, and communication with the backend.
Accelerating SWARM autonomous robot deployment
Under the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the deployment of AMR has been accelerated in order to lower staff’s exposure to the coronavirus and prevent the labor shortage. For example, the shopping mall service robot operates like a mobile kiosk that can move around on its own and offer various services such as inquiry, shelf inspection, shopping guide and precision marketing. It effectively reduces the staff’s routine workload and enhances the service value.
Huang Chi Ta pointed out “Wistron is striving to provide comprehensive robotic solutions to meet the needs of different applications. For example, if multiple robots are required to work together in a shopping mall or a school campus, we can provide a fleet management solution with a backend dashboard to control each robot for optimal operation.”
“When there are a large number of robots in a single area, the point-to-point communication provided by ROS 2 will be even more effective. The combination of 5G and AMR will provide a huge variety of practical robot applications.” Dr. Bill Wang of ADLINK’s New Generation Robotics Platform Division added.
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