Announcing Safety-Certified Veo FreeMove®: Bringing together humans and industrial robots for flexible automation
By Patrick Sobalvarro, Co-founder and CEO,
Clara Vu, Co-founder and CTO, and
Scott Denenberg, Co-founder and VP of Engineering, Veo Robotics
Announcing Veo FreeMove®
We’re very pleased to announce today the launch of Veo FreeMove®, our safety-rated, production-ready 3D safeguarding system for human-robot collaboration. Veo FreeMove makes it easier for the two most flexible resources in a factory—humans and robots —to work together by providing an easily-installed, complete safety solution that can be quickly reconfigured as needs change. FreeMove has been certified by TÜV Rheinland as a PLd, Category 3 safety system according to ISO 13849, and is the ideal safeguarding solution for your collaborative robotic application.
Why We Built FreeMove
Automation brings higher productivity, better quality, lower process variation, and reduced waste to manufacturing and logistics. But automation also has a downside: it replaces inefficient but flexible labor with efficient but generally inflexible machinery.
Veo Robotics was formed in 2016 to address the limitations of current manufacturing technology by adding intelligence and perception to industrial robots so that humans and robots can work together productively, safely, and comfortably.
Building in Safety
From the beginning, every conversation with our customers made it clear to us that success in this business would depend on meeting the stringent safety requirements used to keep workers safe. We joined the US robotics standards committee as a three person, seed-stage startup, and had our first conversation with TÜV Rheinland soon after that.
It was apparent that this level of safety couldn’t be added after the fact, it had to be built in from the ground up, and taken into consideration every step of the way, in every aspect of the system. We needed to find a way to use the power of modern algorithms, sensing, and computing within a framework that met the stringent requirements of industrial safety. Among many other things, this has meant:
New computer vision algorithms to analyze a 3D workcell in a comprehensive way that ensures no human could be overlooked or misidentified;
A new approach to machine intelligence that utilizes modern computing power and techniques, but unlike Machine Learning driven approaches, can be shown to always fall back to safe conclusions in ambiguous situations;
Developing the world’s first safety-rated 3D sensors, using a patented architecture where each sensor includes two imagers, providing redundancy at the pixel level;
Developing a powerful new kind of computing platform, with a novel dual-channel architecture that provides the computing power needed to process 3D data in real time while achieving the redundancy needed for safety.
Receiving the ISO certification for FreeMove from TÜV Rheinland was the culmination of years of innovation and hard work, and we are proud of the team that made it happen.
A New Kind of Automation
Unlike light curtains and other ESPE which depend on complex calculations and careful planning by engineers to know which conditions are safe and which are not, FreeMove’s Sensors continuously monitor the entire workcell in 3D. Using this data, FreeMove’s Engine knows what could be a human and what definitely isn’t, understands the state of the robot, and determines automatically and dynamically if that robot needs to slow or stop to keep those humans safe, and when it’s safe to resume operation.
FreeMove makes dynamic human-robot collaboration accessible by reducing its overall cost and complexity. This means improved productivity, reduced nuisance faults, and a simpler, more comprehensive way to safeguard workcells.
In Summary
FreeMove can be utilized in a wide range of applications including logistics, material handling, and manufacturing. FreeMove will enable more flexible and efficient workcells by allowing the use of standard industrial robots in collaborative applications. FreeMove enables manufacturing engineers to safeguard both robot and non-robot hazards, providing a comprehensive safety system that provides labor savings in the design and commissioning of complex workcells. This leads to shorter design times, less custom machinery, and shorter lead times before workcells are operational. FreeMove also improves robot and human utilization with reduced nuisance faults, providing shorter cycle times, higher unit production rates, and quicker fault recovery, all with improved ergonomics and safety.
Safe, dynamic human-machine interaction is the future of manufacturing.
Learn More
Atlanta-based Factory Automation Systems (FAS) has joined our Certified Systems Integrator program. FAS is an industry veteran of nearly 30 years specializing in the creation of custom turnkey solutions and will include FreeMove® as part of its safety solution offering to customers. FAS joins our program as the second Certified Systems Integrator following Calvary Robotics, and we look forward to announcing more this year.
To find out how to design in FreeMove for your workcell, please contact sales@veobot.com