Building Asset Servicing With Self-Diagnostics and Robot Dispatch
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current systems lack an efficient method for servicing assets within buildings, as they do not effectively utilize advanced communication networks and autonomous maintenance robots to detect issues and perform maintenance tasks in real-time, leading to delayed or inadequate maintenance.
Innovation Solution
Implementing cellular and 5G network-enabled assets that perform self-diagnostics and transmit assistance requests, coupled with automated asset maintenance assistants and mobile robots, which receive and execute service requests to address detected problems, ensuring timely and targeted maintenance.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If manual asset maintenance methods are used, then system complexity is low, but maintenance response time is delayed and productivity is reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The asset maintenance system performs self-diagnostics automatically without human intervention. The system monitors its own status, detects potential problems, and generates assistance requests autonomously, eliminating the need for manual inspection and reducing maintenance response time while maintaining manageable system complexity through automated self-monitoring capabilities.
Solution Approach 2:
The system continuously monitors asset status through self-diagnostics and provides feedback by generating assistance requests when problems are detected. This closed-loop feedback mechanism enables real-time maintenance response, improving productivity by ensuring issues are addressed promptly rather than through delayed manual inspection schedules.
2Reliability
If automated self-diagnostics and cellular network monitoring are implemented, then maintenance precision and reliability are improved, but system complexity and energy consumption increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs self-diagnostics periodically rather than continuously, balancing reliability with energy consumption. Assets conduct self-checks at scheduled intervals and transmit status updates through the cellular network at these periodic moments, ensuring reliable monitoring while avoiding excessive energy usage that would result from continuous operation.
Solution Approach 2:
The cellular network acts as an intermediary that enables reliable communication between distributed assets and the central system without requiring direct continuous connections. This intermediary approach maintains high reliability for maintenance coordination while reducing energy consumption compared to systems requiring constant direct communication links.
3Adaptability or versatility
If multiple specialized mobile asset maintenance robots are deployed, then adaptability and measurement precision are improved, but device complexity and cost increase
Solution Approach 1:
The maintenance robot fleet is segmented into specialized units, each designed for specific maintenance tasks. This segmentation allows the system to deploy only the appropriate robot type for each detected asset problem, improving adaptability to different maintenance needs while managing overall system complexity by dividing functionality into modular, task-specific components rather than requiring one complex universal robot.
Data Source
AI summary
Each of a plurality of assets within a building are configured to access a cellular network in order to ascertain its specific location, to perform self-diagnostics on itself, and to transmit an assistance request when the self-diagnostics indicates a potential problem. The assistance request may include the specific location of the asset and an indication of the potential problem. A server is operably couplable to the cellular network and is configured to receive the assistance requests from the assets, formulate a service request for responding to at least some of the received assistance requests, assign each of the service requests to a corresponding one of one or more automated asset maintenance assistants, and transmit each of the service requests to the assigned automated asset maintenance assistant instructing the assigned automated asset maintenance assistant to respond to the corresponding assistance request.