RoboDeck is reinventing deck maintenance with Viam

RoboDeck uses Viam to quickly iterate on their automated deck care solution while managing their fleet of robots deployed around the world.

RoboDeck uses Viam’s built-in hardware configurations and fleet management to iterate rapidly and manage their deployed deck maintenance robots from anywhere.

Custom smart machine creation

Viam’s state of the art protocols, APIs, and SDKs make it as straightforward as writing software and code to bring hardware to life and rapidly tailor it to customer and business needs.

Smart machine iteration & dev tools

Viam has solutions that can support the entire smart machine development process, from building prototypes to managing machine data, speeding innovation at every step.

Simplified fleet & data management

Viam makes it easy to deploy and see all your robots at a glance, enabling you to control, debug, and remediate issues at scale.

“In the way we can now iterate fast with 3D printing to change and test mechanical parts from one week to the next, the same needs to be true for robotics software, and Viam is empowering all of us to do that.”
—Noam Rand, Co-Founder and CPO, RoboDeck

THE PROBLEM

“It’s difficult for startups to succeed in the hardware and robotics spaces because R&D is very expensive. Iteration times are typically long and getting reliable, quality feedback from the field is a hard thing to do.”

RoboDeck is on a mission to enable people to fully enjoy their outdoor spaces without the frustration of dealing with maintenance. As deck owners, RoboDeck’s founders know the pain firsthand: deck maintenance is a labor-intensive and costly process, made worse by rising labor shortages. For commercial property managers especially, that translates to longer downtimes and revenue losses.

Knowing there had to be a better way, RoboDeck developed an automated deck maintenance robot that can map out, clean and stain, and report on the condition of deck spaces.

To operate effectively in outdoor environments, their robots needed to be robust, well-integrated, and accessible from anywhere. RoboDeck also sought to iterate faster on their proprietary technology for accurately navigating and maintaining deck spaces using custom sensors and SLAM algorithms.

To do that, RoboDeck looked for a robotics software platform that could:

• Enable the rapid building and customization of robots and their hardware components in a way that helped keep costs low and could speed time to market.
• Manage the deployment and configuration of fleets that empowered customers to easily incorporate robots into their daily routines without complexity.
• Provide visibility into deployed robots fleets, including the ability to check a robot’s status and fix any issues without needing to be on site.

THE SOLUTION

“We use Viam for cloud observability, fleet management, and enabling our custom hardware to communicate with other parts of the connected world, whether that’s in the cloud or on our dual device.”

Viam’s modular and abstracted approach to robotics software made it easy for RoboDeck to create and use custom hardware components, and incorporate them quickly and comfortably into their machines.

With robots deployed at sites all around the world, the team also leverages Viam’s built-in fleet management to flexibly access and control robots as well as provide detailed analytics on customer usage.

• Viam APIs enable RoboDeck to build custom workflows for onboarding new customers depending on their deck’s environment and features.
• Viam’s native hardware support and the ability to extend Viam to support custom hardware components or software services allow RoboDeck to save precious development time.
• Built-in logging in the Viam platform makes it easy for RoboDeck to remotely debug issues with individual robots and components.
• Fleet management is built into Viam, giving RoboDeck the ability to monitor their robots’ performance, update code deployments, and support customers from anywhere

THE IMPACT

“Time to market is crucial for companies like ours. Viam has dramatically cut down our iteration time, and through Viam APIs, we’ve also developed new workflows to onboard customers much faster than we have before.”

In shifting the decking industry from using traditionally reactive restoration methods to more frequently performing preventative maintenance, RoboDeck is helping to alleviate the rising labor shortages in the industry. It’s a win-win for everyone: utilizing robotics and automation helps property owners reduce costs while allowing service employees to focus on more productive tasks.

For the RoboDeck team, using Viam to iterate faster and manage their fleet goes further than simplifying the hardware and software aspects of their solution. Noam Rand, Co-Founder & CPO of RoboDeck, shares that “Viam is more than just a software partner, they’re a partner that’s with us for the long run.”

As RoboDeck scales their fleet of deck maintenance robots, they will continue using Viam to:

• Onboard new customers faster and gather reliable, quality feedback from robot deployments.
• Iterate quickly using Viam’s modular and abstracted hardware configurations and software services ‍.
• Support their customers’ different use cases in various locations with Viam’s flexible and secure fleet management capabilities. ‍
• Gather customer usage data to determine how much to charge each customer and refine their Robotics-as-a-Service (RaaS) business model.