The handling of autonomous vehicle fleets often presents a cornucopia of challenges that can, quite frankly, be difficult even for expert operators to navigate, at times. The smooth operation of an autonomous vehicle network requires sophisticated software for coordinating routes, schedules, and unforeseen events. Resources in the form of technical expertise and a strong infrastructure are demands that not every operation may be capable of adding at a moment’s notice.
Enter Cyngn (pronounced “sin·gin”). Whether old vehicles are being retrofitted, new ones are invested in, or AI is needed for novel vehicle form factors, Cyngn’s self-driving vehicle technology helps industrial organizations address demands while innovating, instead of while playing catch-up.
“Autonomous vehicles equipped with Cyngn tech represent a massive opportunity for industries today,” said Lior Tal, Cyngn’s CEO. “And with our latest release comes key upgrade to our fleet management and analytics software so organizations can face problems with head-on intelligence.”
The latest release in question here?
Cyngn’s Enterprise Autonomy Suite 9.0 (or EAS 9.0).
In a how-to demonstration, Azalea Phangsoa, Product Manager at Cyngn, was adept in walking through how – while EAS 8.0 did improve self-driving capabilities – EAS 9.0 makes it easier than ever to monitor, manage, and modify autonomous vehicle fleets.
With from-the-ground-up design, EAS 9.0 works super intuitively with organizations’ existing workflows (i.e. with existing warehouse management tools) to make today’s fleet operations measurably more efficient.
“With EAS 9.0, industrial organizations are able to tap into Cyngn’s intelligent workflow prioritization, vehicle status insights, and automatic missions that respond proactively to vehicle deployments,” Phangsoa explained.
Phangsoa then broke EAS 9.0 down into three primary areas of improvements:
Map View: When you first log in, users will see a bird’s eye view of their site. It shows where vehicles are and the designated zones of operation. With Map View, individual vehicles can be clicked on in order to assess overall fleet status with ease; users can check whether vehicles are in autonomous or manual mode, what mission is active, how much battery may be left, etc. Vehicles in motion are also tracked in real time to score their performance and to keep a closer eye, safety-wise.
Mission Planner: This provides a clear picture, so to speak, of past, present and future work that vehicles have been (or will be) tasked to complete. The convenient columns indicate Dynamic Fleet statuses; this covers a different base than assessments within Map View, as the Dynamic Fleet queue in Mission Planner flags in-progress, completed, and cancelled phases and organizes them in the background as the work day goes on. With EAS 9.0, missions can be assigned automatically to aid in minimizing downtime. Mission Planner follows first-in, first-out protocol; whichever missions are programmed first are deployed first. However, life happens. So, in cases of emergency or reorganized urgency, everything can be reprioritized in seconds.
EAS 9.0’s DriveMod: With new modifications, if a user deploying autonomous vehicles is unsure exactly how long a given vehicle needs to wait at a specific stop (or if it would be better for the vehicle to wait longer so a team member can tell it to go ahead and drive on), a simple dropdown can be accessed in DriveMod so the person tasked with this particular mission can select “Operator Will Press Go.” Then, on whatever screen the DriveMod dashboard is actively being monitored on, pressing the “Confirm Pickup” button is all it takes.
With EAS 9.0 (as with virtually anything in IoT), connectivity is crucial. However, Cyngn comes prepared. In Mission Planner, a new automatic mission is built into the backend for vehicles. So hypothetically, if a vehicle on a mission has lost Wi-Fi connectivity and the site is extremely remote, the vehicle can still carry out its mission without requiring constant connection. Once said mission is carried out, the vehicle will know to return to its home base (that has connectivity) so it can receive its next assignment. (This will also occur simply when no missions are queued in Mission Planner.)
EAS 9.0 also equips teams with a smart override option. Per another hypothetical, let’s say a vehicle brought the wrong pallet and needs to be quickly called back. The vehicle can easily be searched for (i.e. similar to how both Map View and Mission Planner are accessed), and its current path can be overridden situations can be handled and a new mission can begin.
“And like we said,” Phangsoa said, “this is designed to work with existing workflows. In fact, a recent study found that our autonomous industrial vehicle technology increases productivity by 33%, and most organizations have been able to demonstrate an ROI in just a few months’ time.”
“In short,” she added, “EAS 9.0 is a major step towards helping industrial organizations get more done.”
For more information about Cyngn’s at-the-push-of-a-button autonomous vehicle tech, check out these insights.
Edited by
Greg Tavarez
