Robot as a Service is gaining huge popularity among companies. According to a study from Coherent Market Insights, the market will grow from $12.6 billion in 2020 to $41.3 billion in 2028. But what exactly is Robot as a Service and how does it work? In this article I will explain RaaS and how it solves some of the problems of conventional robot integrators, that keep companies from pursuing robot based automation. We will have a look at some companies that already successfully offer RaaS solutions and discuss which challenges still remain for an even wider adaption.
The problem of conventional robot integrators
Robots are already widely adapted in huge manufacturing sites and big warehouses. However, robot integrators often struggle to convince new customers. If you are a company thinking about automation there is plenty of reason to hesitate before adding robots to your workforce.
One of the headaches is a high upfront cost before the robot actually adds value. At first, a concept for integration inside the company has to be developed. Then there is the price of the robots and possibly additional equipment as well as their installation at the facility. During operation you got maintenance cost and if the demand for automation changes, scaling the use of robots up or down is not easily possible.
For companies there is still a lot of overall risk involved. The cost of employing robots is difficult to predict and so the economic value can not be easily calculated up front. This sets a high barrier to entry especially for small and medium sized companies. The concept of RaaS sets out to lower this barrier significantly.
How does RaaS solve these problems?
RaaS is a subscription based model which means the customer leases the robots plus equipment instead of buying it and gets access to software services through a subscription model. There are different pricing models but the idea is that the customer only pays for the robots when they are productively working. The customer may be charged on how many hours the robot is running or based on the amount of cycles the robot is executing. The price stays the same no matter how many robots brake and need to be replaced.
That way a lot of that risk and uncertainty is taken over by the robot integrator. For the customer it means costs are more predictable and the economic value of the robot integration can be calculated up front. The model is also more flexible as RaaS solutions can be easily scaled up or down if the demand changes.
RaaS is already successfully used
There are a lot of robotics companies that already sucessfully apply the RaaS business model. Among these companys are:
Cobalt Robotics
They provide a mobile security robot that patrols the customer’s facility. It can observe and report not only security issues but through onboard sensors is has a broad awareness of its environment. It can for example detect leaking pipes and that way is able to help out the facility management as well. Cobalt Robotics charges on an hourly rate and only takes into account the time their robots are actively monitoring.
Savioke
With their autonomous delivery robot Relay, Savioke targets hotels as well as the healthcare sector. Relay has a box on top that can carry different kinds of payload to patients and doctors as well as hotel guests. For each robot they charge a certain fixed price per month.
InVia Robotics
The company focuses on warehouse automation. Their robots can pick packages from the shelves and deliver them wherever they need to go. I addition, they provide software to control the process and increase efficiency plus they employ a dedicated team that monitors the robots. All of this is offered as a subscription-based model and customers can scale up or down based on order volume. One of their pricing models is a fixed price per pick.
Remaining challenges for RaaS
The above examples show that the business model is already sucessfully applied in various robot applications. However, looking closer at RaaS companys (e.g. at rlist.io), most of them provide mobile robot solutions. That is no surprise as the customization and integration effort for mobile robot applications is often smaller. When you want to deploy robots e.g. at a production line however, you need to physically integrate the robot into the manufacturing process. In terms of software, you may need to integrate the robot into some pre-existing process management system the company uses.
This is less of a problem for mobile robots because they are flexible to adapt to different environments and therefore need less customization. Also they often don’t need to be integrated into some preexisting process management system but can do their job pretty much independently (especially in the case of service robots). Last but not least, the demands on safety are usually smaller. Most mobile robots are operating indoors (except for outdoor delivery robots) and as long as the robot doesn’t bump into things or people it doesn’t pose a big thread.This is not that easy to proof for other types of robots.
RaaS is a promising business model that can help accelerate the spread of robot based automation as it lowers the barrier of entry. It makes the deployment more flexible and the economic value more predictable. At the moment, most of RaaS is happening with mobile robots but in the future, with technological progress and with robot integrators gaining more experience, the adaption will likely spread to all areas of robotics.
