Formant
Software Vendor
Headquarters: San Francisco, CA, USA
Established: 2017Public: NOWebsite: https://formant.io
Software/OS:
Quick Overview:
Formant.io is a software company which provides a unique solution for robot companies who desire to remotely monitor and operate their machines. Formant can be use by a corporation to remotely monitor all of their robotic systems, either within a specific factory or even worldwide across multiple facilities.
Products:
- ​Observe
- ​Analyze
- ​Operate
​Applications:
- ​Remote Teleoperation
- ​Robot Operations Center
- ​Fault Analysis and Root Cause
Background
The Formant solution has all of the necessary features to enable remote monitoring and control, including:
- Automated alerts
- ​Data logging & root cause analysis
- Remote teleoperation (coming soon)
- Simulation
- Fleet Management
​Using the cloud and encrypted data communication, the ​user/operator can track and manage a remote fleet of robots. The Formant Cloud manages all of the communication between the Format software and the remote software agents which are tracking the physical machine operation.
Formant currently has a large number of integrations, starting with ROS. Any robot running ROS can immediately be attached to the Formant Cloud. Formant optimizes data flow from robots to cloud, to 3rd party applications and downstreams apps, all the way through to its own dashboarding product that enables out-of-the box monitoring, alerting and intervention solution.
Formant acquired remote control software company Formantion in August 2019. Formation, founded in 2018 by a small team based out of Pittsburgh, was driven by the growing trend of robotics companies optimizing for semi-autonomy.
​Helps ​Control a Growing Manufacturing Fleet of Automation Systems
​For ​manufacturing corporations, Format ​delivers a software solution to bring all of their automation under the control of a single, unified platform. This ​provides immense benefits as automation systems scale up and the ratio of operators to machines increases. Formant boasts that with their solution it is possible to have a ratio of 100:1 machines to operators.
​A Standardized Solution for ​Robotic Service ​Providers
Another important use case for Formant solutions is as a Robot Operation Center (ROC) solution for young Robotic Service Providers (RSP) automation companies. RSPs will emerge as the dominant automation delivery mechanism over the next decade. Delivering Robots-as-a-Service (RaaS) to a new automation market, a young RSP will find that the Formant solution is a quick way to setup their ROC and immediately start supporting their installed fleet of robots. Formant expects this to be a $40B market over the next 3 years.
