NAiSE TRAFFIC MANAGER: OPTIMIZES INDUSTRIAL TRAFFIC FLOW

13.02.2025 | naise.eu

SEAMLESS MATERIAL FLOW IN MIXED OPERATIONS

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OPTIMIZING INTRALOGISTICS ENVIRONMENT

Inefficiencies in industrial operations lead to significant financial losses for companies worldwide, with unplanned downtime alone costing industrial manufacturers up to $50 billion annually (Forbes 2022). In warehouses, inefficient processes not only result in costly mistakes but also waste valuable time and resources. These issues highlight the critical need for improved coordination and optimized workflows in industrial environments.

As companies strive for operational excellence, the need for better traffic management and optimized processes has never been more urgent. Internal traffic flow, involving everything from vehicles to robots, plays a pivotal role in ensuring smooth operations. Without an intelligent system to manage these interactions, companies risk delays, accidents, and lost productivity.

NAiSE Traffic Manager tackles these industrial challenges by precisely orchestrating transportation flow, transforming factory floors and logistics centers into dynamic, interconnected ecosystems through advanced automation. With its innovative features, NAiSE Traffic Manager ensures seamless coordination across diverse fleets within intralogistics environments, reducing the risk of collisions and significantly enhancing communication between all traffic participants.

KEY FEATURES OF NAiSE TRAFFIC MANAGER

Key functionalities include advanced traffic rules management, hybrid traffic simulation, and detailed traffic analysis, all designed to drive optimal efficiency. Additionally, NAiSE Traffic Manager connects and automates critical industrial components such as gates, lights, and elevators, enabling smooth and synchronized operations. Our comprehensive solution offers actionable insights that empower better decision-making and allow businesses to adapt to future operational scenarios.

Traffic Rules Management

Just as traffic rules govern the flow of vehicles, similar principles apply to warehouses and production environments, where robots, pedestrians, and vehicles interact. NAiSE Traffic Manager addresses this need by defining rules using zones that help control movement and avoid collisions. The system simplifies zone creation, allowing users to easily define areas where specific participants, like robots, can operate. As environments evolve, the system allows quick updates to zones and rules, ensuring continued operational efficiency. With support for both 2D and 3D maps, users can easily visualize and manage their facility’s layout.

Mobile Robot Control

NAiSE Traffic Manager offers advanced control for mobile robots, supporting both VDA 5050 and non-VDA 5050 robots, optimizing their navigation, task management, and coordination within industrial environments. Robots can be assigned tasks such as picking, transporting, and delivering materials. Once a task is defined, the system automatically calculates the most efficient path, considering distance, obstacles, and real-time changes. Paths are dynamically adjusted to avoid delays and collisions. The system operates based on zones, where rules ensure robots follow designated paths, avoid restricted areas, and interact with humans, vehicles, and other robots. Custom rules can be set for different zones, allowing for efficient traffic flow.

Charging stations and parking zones are defined on the map, and AI-based rules guide robots to these stations when battery levels are low or after completing tasks. The system automatically directs robots for recharging and assigns parking areas, ensuring they’re ready for the next task. The rules adapt to the evolving environment, optimizing robot operations based on battery usage, task completion, and system load.

VDA 5050 MAP Integration

VDA 5050 is an open standard protocol developed by the German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA) to standardize communication for autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), automated guided vehicles (AGVs), and other logistics systems in industrial environments. The MAP (Mobility and Positioning) component ensures seamless communication across systems operating in different zones within a facility. By integrating VDA 5050 MAP, NAiSE Traffic Manager enables interoperability between various robots and systems, regardless of manufacturer or technology. In this setup, nodes (key locations like charging stations or pickup areas) and edges (paths connecting them) define the robot’s movement map. These elements can be directly configured in the NAiSE software, enabling effective route planning.

Industrial Automation and Integration

NAiSE Traffic Manager enables seamless integration of key industrial components like gates, lights, elevators, and fire alarms by utilizing technologies such as MQTT (Message Queuing Telemetry Transport). Through this integration, different systems within the production environment communicate in real time, transforming digital data into automated processes. By connecting these components, the Traffic Manager ensures smooth transitions between operational stages. For instance, when a robot approaches a gate, the system can automatically signal the gate to open, while simultaneously adjusting the lights and elevators based on the robot’s position and task. Through the use of such technologies, NAiSE moves beyond simple digitization and brings full automation to industrial environments.

Hybrid Simulation

Hybrid simulation is an advanced technique used in industrial automation to combine both physical and digital models in order to simulate real-world processes more accurately and in real time. It plays a key role in testing and refining the behavior of mobile robots and other automated systems before they are deployed in live environments. This approach allows businesses to simulate various operational scenarios, including traffic flow, obstacle avoidance, task allocation, and response to dynamic changes in the environment.

Traffic Analysis

NAiSE Traffic Manager includes a specialized software module for advanced traffic analysis, offering valuable insights into the movement and behavior of mobile robots and other participants in industrial environments. The software provides detailed flow maps and heat maps, enabling operators to monitor key performance metrics such as speed, presence, conflict, and flow. The system generates heat maps based on real-time data, providing a visual representation of various traffic factors. These heat maps represent:

  • – Speed: Identifying areas where robots or manually drive vehicles are moving faster or slower than expected.
  • – Presence: Showing the concentration of vehicles in specific areas.
  • – Conflict: Highlighting potential or actual collisions between robots, obstacles, or other entities in the environment.

In addition, NAiSE Traffic Manager includes a flow map that provides a visual representation of traffic flow across the entire facility. This map helps track the efficiency of robot movement, identifying areas where traffic congestion or bottlenecks may occur. For more dynamic analysis, the system also features a time shift option, allowing users to understand past scenarios by adjusting the timing of data. This feature provides flexibility similar to a Virtual Automated Robot (VAR) in sports analysis, enabling users to replay or forecast events and assess how changes in traffic dynamics affect performance over time.

TRAFFIC MANAGER IN ACTION: CONTINENTAL INGOLSTADT CASE STUDY

Continental’s Ingolstadt plant in Germany serves as an exemplary case for the successful implementation of the Traffic Manager. Here, the system coordinates a fleet of AMRs alongside human-operated vehicles to handle the material transport needs of one of the most complex automotive manufacturing facilities in Europe.

In this environment, production floors are not static; they are highly dynamic with frequent adjustments to material handling requirements. The Traffic Manager adapts to these fluctuations, ensuring that automated and manual vehicles can coexist without compromising the speed of operations. The system intelligently manages traffic flow, directing robots and human-driven vehicles to designated areas and routes, ensuring that materials are transported in the most efficient manner possible.

Read the full use case: Link

TRANSFORMING INDUSTRIAL TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT

NAiSE Traffic Manager is a key component of the broader NAiSE Intralogistics Platform, which also includes Fleet Manager, Order Manager, and Warehouse Manager. Together, these modules provide an integrated, holistic solution that optimizes every aspect of your intralogistics process—from traffic management and fleet coordination to order fulfillment and warehouse operations. With this all-in-one platform, companies can streamline their entire intralogistics ecosystem, enabling better synchronization, more efficient operations, and greater overall control.

The solution’s ability to provide a simple, user-friendly interface combined with sophisticated capabilities ensures that businesses can optimize their processes with minimal disruption and complexity. It offers the flexibility to adapt to evolving operational requirements while maintaining transparency and ease of use—essential for modern businesses striving for operational excellence.