Reduced Training for Clearpath Robotics

Things are going great! We’ve rolled out VKS in preliminary form for most of our products and in the short time we’ve been using it, we have become modestly proficient with the system. Form data capture in VKS is an extremely versatile and useful tool: it has changed the game dramatically for our team; both in terms of easy data capture and form data searching. In under 30 seconds, I have full visibility about robot S/N XXXX.

At the outset of this project, I was faced with the task of having someone write a script to rip data from published reports and dumping them into a support database. Now, I’ve just given the support team a management account so that they can do these simple searches themselves!

We put VKS to the test about 4 weeks ago. Our average test and assembly time on a Turtlebot with an experienced tech is 30-40 minutes. I had my work cell set up. I gave our brand new never-seena-Turtlebot-in-his-life co-op student a tablet and a login. He pressed play and followed the instructions without needing to ask any questions. You know how long it took him to assemble the robot? 32 minutes.

If we diligently document assembly instructions, we can nearly eliminate training altogether. It is wonderful. It makes our production so scalable. All we have to do to produce more is add a computer and bring in labour. Every day your software gets better, and I love it.