The HiTech Robotic Systemz Ltd (THRSL), aimed at transforming businesses with robotics, is helping reimagine factory, warehouse and on-road logistics operations by augmenting human performance with intelligently automating physical operations, says Founder and CEO Anuj Kapuria.
Its Autonomous and Driver Assist Solutions (ADAS), for instance, is tailored for Indian roads and has led to impressive outcomes, including marked reduction in accidents, decrease in over speeding, and increase in fuel efficiency, for clients, Kapuria told PTI. India has the highest number of road fatalities with a crash occurring every minute and a fatality every four minutes. Over 80 per cent of accidents result from human error, he pointed out.
“As the passenger car market undergoes a structural shift driven by electrification, connected technologies, and autonomous vehicles, along with growing customer awareness of vehicle safety, we are prepared to enter this market,” Kapuria explained. In all this, THRSL enjoys the ability to iterate over product concepts and ideas with the support of cloud computing provider AWS, Kapuria said. From a deployment standpoint, AWS offers scalable and cost-effective cloud infrastructure, allowing THRSL to adjust resources as needed without excessive expenses, according to him. Excerpts from the interview:
Q: What is the vision and mission of The Hi-Tech Robotic Systemz (human centric automation). How are you applying it to two major areas, logistics and operational workflows?
A: The HiTech Robotic Systemz Ltd (THRSL) was started with a purpose to enrich human lives through smart technologies’. Hence we provide solutions to augment human performance by intelligently automating physical operations in industrial and supply chain domain. We have over 100 patents that we have filed for, with over 60 of them granted in India, the US and European Union. Our unique software-first approach even to physical robots, has helped us coin the term software defined robots as well as software defined ADAS. We have over 100 customers, realising significant benefits using our solutions.
Q: Could you share some of your customer success stories in terms of safety, cost reduction, operational efficiency?
A: Let me first talk about ADAS. Car crashes globally claim approximately 1.3 million lives annually, costing countries around 3 per cent of their GDP. India has the highest number of road fatalities, with a crash occurring every minute and a fatality every four minutes. Over 80 per cent of accidents result from human error. Driver fatigue contributes to 40 per cent of trucking accidents in the US. Similar issues exist in India, where no established standards govern driving hours or mandatory rest periods. Drivers operate for long hours under challenging conditions, often experiencing physical and mental health issues. Many drivers sleep below recommended levels, leading to unsafe practices and high operational costs.
To address these challenges, we provide video telematics with edge AI technology powered by `Deepsense’, our computer vision platform, using ML-based analytics for diagnostic, prescriptive, predictive, causal, and inferential analytics. This solution offers real-time driver warnings and cloud-based insights, improving fleet efficiency. Our ADAS products are tailored for Indian roads based on analysing over six billion kilometres of data. With over 20,000 trucks on our platform, we have achieved impressive outcomes, including 90 per cent accident reduction, 60 per cent decrease in over speeding, and 2-5 per cent fuel efficiency increase.
Now on robotics. Demand for personalised products has led to shorter lifecycles and more variants. Challenges like line stoppages cost automotive manufacturers millions, necessitating flexible, modular, and AI-driven solutions for modernisation. HiTech Robotic has revolutionised assembly and manufacturing facilities by replacing sequential conveyors with a 2D grid network. We have redefined mobile robotics to create ‘Software Defined Robots’ which can be reconfigured purely through software. NovusFlow is our industry agnostics fog platform for integrated intelligence and mobility value delivery across workflows which has a reliability of over 99.9 per cent, with fault tolerance and safety built in.
Our intelligent fleet management software Novus xFleet orchestrates the behaviour of the team of robots agnostic to the robot hardware by ensuring intelligent task assignment to each robot, and managing the traffic, route and process sequence to ensure optimal throughput and productivity. Then an analytics layer (Novus Analytics), to understand any abnormalities in the process and to generate actionable insights for further improving the efficiency. There is a human robot interface and AI directed layer, which helps guide the actions of the worker based on the process steps needed to ensure that time is not wasted.
These solutions have been successfully deployed across 75 plus customers, delivering significant benefits like a 30 per cent reduction in material movement costs, up to 20 per cent improved productivity, 40 per cent decrease in quality defects. Hi Tech Robotic Systemz collaborates with renowned companies such as Asian Paints, John Deere, ITC, OLA, 3PL, and e-commerce firms to transform warehouse throughput.
Q: Tell us about your engagement and scale of operations in the Indian defence landscape. How are you driving impact in that ecosystem?
A: Our business began with partnership with defence. Like with any cutting-edge technology, defence usually becomes the prime mover. We are proud to say our technology has become the backbone of most autonomous and unmanned ground vehicles in the country. This helped us create our technology platform (NovusFlow) from scratch with reliability of 99.99 per cent, fault tolerance and safety built in accordance with the stringent standards. We have supplied systems for various missions, including counter terrorism, surveillance, explosive ordinance disposal and mine detection to various defence and government customers, and have received commendations for the same.
Q: How has AWS enabled your business to stay agile and innovate? Can you list some of the business benefits because of running on AWS?
A: AWS offers significant benefits to our products as a technology company. We enjoy the ability to iterate over product concepts and ideas with the support of AWS. Access to early beta features and consideration of feature requests for our specific use cases have greatly aided our innovation process. Furthermore, AWS provides a robust support system through its professional services and partner ecosystem. This ensures that we receive expert guidance and assistance throughout our cloud journey, optimising our utilisation of AWS services. From a deployment standpoint, AWS offers scalable and cost-effective cloud infrastructure, allowing us to adjust resources as needed without excessive expenses. The breadth of services available on AWS facilitates faster time-to-market, enabling us to quickly deliver our products and services to customers.
AWS also prioritises global standards and practices regarding data privacy and cyber security on the cloud, ensuring the protection of our sensitive information and compliance with regulations. In summary, AWS empowers us by accelerating innovation, providing robust support, offering cost-effective scalability, enabling rapid time to market, and maintaining high standards of data privacy and cyber security.
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