OTTO Motors and Siemens join forces to implement autonomous material handling solution

OTTO Motors and Siemens Canada have entered into a new partnership. Both companies are working together on Industry 4.0 technologies. These range from high-performance collaborative mobile robot control to physical asset tracking using Real Time Location Systems (RTLS). RTLS is a technology by Siemens that uses a scalable locating system that is designed specifically for industrial applications.

“Siemens’ global presence and breadth of product portfolio have been clear to us for as long as we’ve been in business,” said Ryan Gariepy, CTO of OTTO Motors. “Using Siemens controllers to power OTTO fleets will allow our [autonomous mobile robots] AMRs to achieve a new level of driving performance without compromising safety. For our customers, this means maximum productivity and better ROI.”

OTTO Motors offers material handling solutions for manufacturing facilities and warehouses through its line of AMRs. AMRs contribute to safe, reliable and efficient material delivery.

“Siemens RTLS systems will enable OTTO Motors’ customers to dynamically locate autonomous mobile robots and other assets with up to 30 cm accuracy,” explains Joris Myny, senior vice-president of digital industries at Siemens Canada. “The result is an optimized fleet and precise AMR routing as well as enhanced bottleneck and collision avoidance. Any asset or person with an RTLS transponder can be seen and tracked, which opens up additional asset tracking use cases beyond the AMR implementation.”

Siemens recently customized its industrial controller development toolchain such that OTTO is now able to develop, test and deploy controls code that aligns better with the requirements of mobile autonomous systems. With this, OTTO has been able to develop, validate and deliver everything from minor improvements to new robots into production faster than before.