New collaboration for unique solutions in the AMR industry
Stuttgart, Baden-Wuerttemberg. NODE Robotics and TUGBOT signed a collaboration agreement at the automatica fair in munich that will enable the TUGBOT autonomous mobile robot to be powered by NODE.EDGE robot navigation and NODE.SRVS fleet management.
TUGBOT is a Portuguese company that manufactures the world’s only autonomous mobile robot that can pull any cart and NODE Robotics is a German company that provides state-of-the-art robot navigation and fleet management systems for all kinds of AMRs.
TUGBOT is a software-agnostic robot which means it can be powered by any software platform that is ROS-based and in the last quarter of 2021 the TUGBOT software team did a comprehensive research of all software for AMRs available in the market to increase its portfolio and produced a hot list of 12 companies. After completion of the benchmarking process the TUGBOT team realised that from the 12 companies analysed NODE Robotics stood out in the comparison – especially due to their proven industrial readiness and being agnostic to hardware and sensors. Then both sides decided to forge a partnership to combine the uniqueness of the TUGBOT with the reliability, robustness and smartness of NODE solutions.
Fernando Freitas, CEO of TUGBOT, commented – “I was personally leading the software benchmark with Pedro Nunes, VP Engineering of TUGBOT, and we were both really impressed from the very first meeting with the clever way the NODE software was architectured and how quick their system was integrated to our robot being able to navigate and map in a matter of hours. In addition to that, NODE has all the desired features we were looking for – combining spectacular performance and repeatability with an easy-to-use and quick-to-deploy interface.”
After several meetings and lab tests it was time to take the TUGBOT with NODE to a real world environment. TUGBOT was then deployed and tested in a large German manufacturer delighting those present with the ability to navigate and localise with perfection in a very dynamic environment using 2D Live SLAM without any need for infrastructure or environmental changes.
Lukas Teichmann, COO of NODE Robotics, commented – “When TUGBOT first contacted us looking for a software partner we analysed their technology and clearly saw the opportunity to have our software powering a unique and innovative autonomous mobile robot that to our knowledge has no direct competitor. The TUGBOT covers a gap in our portfolio of AMRs as we did not have a robot that could pull carts. This helps us in our strategy to provide an AMR portfolio for any type of transportation task even earlier than expected!”
Despite the fact that the sales cycle in the AMR industry is anything between 3 to 18 months, the successful performance of TUGBOT and NODE on the field has already generated two contracts with two German companies that will see several TUGBOTs being deployed this summer. Both parties are now preparing the collateral to make the TUGBOT and NODE system available to all clients from any industry – intralogistics, manufacturing, hospitality and commercial applications. The AMR industry is about to change and you are invited to take part in this groundbreaking solution that TUGBOT and NODE will bring to the market.
About NODE Robotics
Flexibility and autonomy are core requirements for the factory of the future. In the field of intralogistics, Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) are the key to meeting these. However, the current patchwork of incompatible and inadequate software solutions for AMRs on the market prevents the spread of this key technology and puts fleet operators further into vendor lock in situations.
NODE.OS, an end-to-end software solution for operating multi-vendor and heterogeneous AMR fleets with high autonomy and minimal commissioning efforts, can be seamlessly integrated into every production plant.
For more information, visit www.node-robotics.com or www.tugbot.com.
