IERA Award 2024: Realtime Robotics Awarded for Optimization Tool

Industrial Robots Easily Choreographed to Cut Cycle Times

Yokohama, Jun 18, 2024 — The 2024 “Award for Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Robotics & Automation” (IERA) goes to Realtime Robotics. The US company from Boston won the prestigious prize for its fully-automatic motion planning tool for industrial robots. The solution develops an optimized “choreography” for robots closely working together in workcells without collision. This year, for the first time, all four finalists are newcomers in the industry.

“The finalists stand out due to their high quality and show that the robotics industry has entered a new period,” said Andra Keay, IERA Awards Chair & Vice President of the RAS Industrial Activities Board. “For the first time, all finalist companies are young and were formed within the last ten years. These newcomers have raised more than $500 million USD of investment and employ more than 1,300 people. We look forward to seeing more young robotics companies with big commercial goals in the future.”

Finding the choreography that fits best

This year’s winner, Realtime Robotics, has pioneered the optimization of robotic workcells to improve performance and cut cycle times. The tool solves the task of motion planning at high speed – evaluating hundreds of thousands of solutions before providing manufacturers with optimized paths, sequences and tool rotations for their robots.

Traditionally, programming the workcell is a time-consuming job for engineers and finding a good choreography is a typical bottleneck. What is more, when robots’ tasks change, the planning process has to start all over again. The tool, invented by Realtime Robotics, is fully automated and develops a good motion plan at high speed. Customers from manufacturing, warehousing, and logistics can benefit when they install workcells or if they want to improve robotic performance without disrupting production. Future versions of the tool could optimize energy consumption or floor space.

"It is a tremendous honor to be recognized by the leading organizations in the robotics industry" said Will Floyd-Jones, co-founder of Realtime Robotics. "The award is validation at the highest level for our Optimization solution and the tireless efforts of our team to bring this vision to the market."

The IERA Award winner 2024 from left: Koji Kobayashi and Will Floyd-Jones, Realtime Robotics; Andra Keay, IERA Awards Chair, IEEE-RAS © IEEE-RAS

The finalists

The other three IERA Award finalists are: Fourier Intelligence from Shanghai, China, with its Humanoid Robot “GR-1”, a robot with human-like motion control capabilities. Youibot Robotics from Shenzhen, China, which took part with its “OW12”, a mobile manipulator robot used in the automation of semiconductor manufacturing. Neura Robotics from Metzingen, Germany, presented its Cognitive Robotics Platform. The award final took place during the International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Yokohama, Japan.