At the recent InOrbit Connect Live event, attendees with a keen interest in robotics for supply chain and logistics were in for a treat. The event featured a lineup of experts from industry-leading companies, including Kärcher, Instock, and SICK, who showcased innovative products for automation and infrastructure. However, the highlight of the event was a panel discussion on "Robot Operations in the Supply Chain." This insightful conversation delved deep into the latest technologies, strategies, and the benefits of effective RobOps in the supply chain industry.

We hope you’re ready for a front-row seat at our amazing robotics event. On September 28th InOrbit has something new to share with InOrbit Connect Live, a free robotics expo and conversation perfect for those exploring how to integrate robotics into their supply chain and logistics operations. This is the event where tech meets talk, and robots rule the stage!

At InOrbit, we've always admired the remarkable work of OTTO Motors and Clearpath Robotics. Our history together is filled with exciting collaborations starting back in 2022 when we partnered on the development of a ROS2 to VDA 5050 connector, and followed up with an impressive demo at the AMR & Logistics conference. Our approach to robotics and a desire to share a vision for an open and connected future are very closely aligned. In fact, this is one of the reasons Clearpath’s Jackal became one of the first real robots we purchased. So today, we're thrilled to share the latest chapter in our journey by welcoming the OTTO 100 officially to the InOrbit Robot Space. 

InOrbit’s guiding vision is to build a world where humans, robots and AI in the cloud work together to drive radical productivity improvements and empower people to reach new heights. It’s this vision that has driven our open-source initiatives, and that led directly to the launch of the Free and later Developer editions of our platform. This vision is also one of the factors that drove us to open the InOrbit Robot Space earlier this year. If we want InOrbit to be a catalyst for change to demystify robotics, to promote effective robot operations, and teach people how to work collaboratively with robots we need to live our values. We need to share our knowledge Now with this week’s launch of InOrbit Education Edition we are crystalizing that effort with completely free RobOps software that can be used to teach and inspire the next generation of roboticists.

At InOrbit, we’re often asked for robotics advice. Our partners and prospective customers know that we have expertise across vendors, and across industries. Unlike systems integrators, we are, and have always been hardware agnostic. We are trusted to give informed, expert advice without bias. As we recently announced, InOrbit Intelligence formalizes our consultation service with guidance for companies using robots at any stage of their automation journey.

At InOrbi we want to demystify robotics. Our core business is B2B but we know we're reaching people outside of the "traditional" world of manufacturing and automation. We see it in the comments section on social media, we see it in the people brand new to the space who reach out to us for expert guidance, and we see it every day at the InOrbit Robot Space from average people on the street looking to learn more. Simply put the scope of the robotics landscape is growing as robots become a part of regular people's lives more than ever. We hope the people we connect with will share in our vision for a better world through robots.

At InOrbit we love getting the opportunity to connect directly with customers, industry peers, and each other. There’s a wonderful intimacy that binds us together as advocates for automation when we’re able to meet at events. This is even more important for InOrbit as we are a distributed company that most often works from far-flung cities scattered around the world. This May at Automate 2023, some of our team had a chance to come together in Detroit for one of the biggest robotics events in North America. There we celebrated our achievements, shared our passion for robotics and spoke to everyone we could about the recent strides InOrbit has made, promoting the value of effective robot operations.

We’re very excited today to announce our plans for Automate 2023, which kicks off in Detroit a week from now. The event, run by the Association for Advancing Automation (or A3) is the premier robotics industry conference, and one of our favorites. Last year’s Automate was a true highlight for InOrbit, as it gave us an opportunity to bring our platform and RobOps solutions to a massive and engaged audience. This year we’re thrilled to raise the bar once again as we launch new capabilities specifically for companies deploying robots and for companies building them.

When dealing with robotics, missions mean much more than just a series of tasks strung together. For operators and those managing robots in the field, a mission is a floor that's been cleaned, an aisle that's been scanned, or an item that's been picked. Mission performance is critical to understanding success

At InOrbit, we have been developing missions as a key feature for fleet management. We’ve worked closely with customers who operate robots at scale and need to understand how their fleet is performing. As the definition of a mission may differ from one customer to another, or even within robots in the same fleet, we’ve focused on building an API that can easily adapt to different setups.

In this article, we will dive into the key features that make InOrbit’s mission tracking an invaluable tool for robot development and operations: observability, performance optimization and adaptability. If you already have your robots InOrbit but haven’t used missions yet or if you are exploring the platform, you will learn how this feature can enhance your robot development.