24/7 autonomous factory inspection
Most robot pilots die in the lab. This one shipped to a real production floor and stayed there.
Problem
A Japanese industrial manufacturer needed inspection coverage that scaled beyond what human walk-throughs could sustain — 24/7, across a production floor that already included humans and autonomous guided vehicles. Sensor-based defect detection had to be reliable enough to trigger maintenance work orders directly, not just produce “interesting” data. The gap between a promising R&D prototype and a robot that runs next to people for months was the real problem.
Approach
Directed the full program lifecycle from lab R&D through live factory deployment. Built a 1:2 scale railcar environment at the client’s R&D facility — end-to-end from spatial design and material specification through scenic build and systems integration — so the team could iterate inspection behavior against a realistic environment before committing to the factory floor. Connected the robot’s defect-detection outputs to a real-time digital twin that drives work order management, so detections become actions in the existing maintenance flow. Coordinated the AMR’s operation alongside existing AGVs and human workers.
Outcome
- Live 24/7 factory deployment running alongside humans and AGVs
- Sensor-based defect detection wired into real-time digital twin → work orders
- 2-year program completed: lab R&D to production
- TODO: verify metric — uptime %
- TODO: verify metric — defect detection rate vs. baseline
- TODO: verify metric — inspection coverage per shift