Imagine a world where robots interact in perfect harmony, avoiding obstacles and optimizing industrial processes. This world is already a reality for Realtime Robotics, an innovative startup. The key to their success? The integration of CAD Exchanger into their technology platform. Let's discover how.
Introducing Realtime Robotics
Based in Boston, Massachusetts, Realtime Robotics is a high-tech company specializing in robotic movement planning. Their cutting-edge technology allows multiple robots to coordinate their movements to work optimally in an industrial environment.
- Application Areas: Logistics, industrial automation, and more.
- Flagship Products: RapidSense for monitoring and RapidPlan for movement coordination.
- Technology: Use of depth-of-field cameras and planning algorithms to avoid collisions.
Challenges and Solutions Provided by CAD Exchanger
The major challenge for Realtime Robotics was managing different CAD data formats. Each robot and component in a work environment may have CAD models in different formats, making the coordination task extremely complex.
- Format Complexity: It's difficult to manage multiple CAD formats without an integrated solution.
- Decision Time: Will Floyd-Jones, the co-founder, took about 10 minutes to decide to use CAD Exchanger.
- Unified API: CAD Exchanger offers a simple and effective API to solve complex issues related to CAD formats.
- Mesh Support: The ability to transform any BRAP representation into meshes is an advantage for visualization and collision detection.
Testimonial from Will Floyd-Jones, Co-founder and Robotics Engineer at Realtime Robotics, perfectly summarizes the benefits of CAD Exchanger:
“CAD Exchanger is great because it collapses all the complex infrastructure for loading 3D CAD into a single unified API with a simple data structure to encode it. I actually can't imagine making the API to it much simpler given the hideous complexity it has to abstract.”
Thanks to CAD Exchanger, Realtime Robotics can now support 22 different CAD formats, including JT, Parasolid, ACIS, and others. This has not only solved their format issues but also enabled better obstacle detection and more responsive work cell monitoring.
The journey of Realtime Robotics illustrates how a sound technology decision can have a significant impact. The integration of CAD Exchanger has streamlined their process and allowed them to focus on what they do best: developing cutting-edge robotics technologies.