Designing for the Robots as a Service Model

The robots as a service, or RaaS, business model is alive and well as a way of conserving upfront capital.To get more news about Robotics as a Service, you can visit glprobotics.com official website.

With the explosive growth in cloud-based storage, computing, and commerce, SaaS (software as a service) business models are already a fact of life in business.

The advantages are many, including more predictable costs, less upfront capital outlay and in many cases, easier and less costly deployment and maintenance and support costs.

Providers of SaaS solutions offer management, analytical, and other data-related services along with the base level services provided.

The robotics industry is no exception, with a number of companies also offering RaaS business models. From drones to perform surveys for agriculture and mobile telepresence robots used for security, to mobile robots for healthcare and more, many robotics suppliers are expanding their businesses.

Robots as a service enables them to lower the technical and financial barriers to implementation and deployment.

“The general trend among many technology providers is a long-term migration away from selling products to selling services beyond the usual incremental revenue from support, maintenance and upgrades charges,” said Dan Kara, practice director for robotics at research firm ABI Research. He will also be delivering a Market Forecast on the state of the robotics industry at RoboBusiness 2017.

“Services are recurrent revenue and are looked on favorably by both technology providers and the investment community,” he added. “Like the technology sector at large, suppliers of robotics technologies have adopted robotics-as-a-service business models, and this trend is accelerating.”For example, if the robot is mobile, you may want to include GPS/location tracking so that the provider can track (and perhaps monitor) the location of the robot, much like automotive companies track leased vehicles.

As the service provider is also likely going to be responsible for maintenance of the robot, monitoring the health of key components or subsystems of the robot will also likely be required. This requires communication capability back to the service provider.

In cases where uptime for the robot is a critical factor, or where access or repairs to a robot could be very expensive, designed-in redundancy for critical systems should also be considered where feasible.

Service providers can also enhance their offerings by providing metrics to help the client. For example, warehouse robots could be monitored for how and where inventory is being accessed within the warehouse, along with how long it takes to access the inventory.

This data could be used to optimize the location of higher-volume inventory within the warehouse, reducing access time and improving efficiency.

Robotics as a Service providers can take advantage of scalable cloud-based computing platforms to provide a wide range of computational power. By capturing and analyzing data gathered by robots in their environment, they can give valuable real-time insights into business operations. This cloud-based approach is viewed far more favorably by customers compared with purchasing hardware that they own and would need to maintain.