Sol Robotics and Viam are unlocking the future of cobots

Sol Robotics’ novel cobot platform can be seamlessly controlled with Viam, enabling businesses to swiftly build and deploy new cobot applications.

From prototype to production

Pre-built hardware configurations speed up development and deployment.

Composable software

Add flexibility to robotic system architecture with plug-and-play configurations.

Collaborative all around

Remote control in Viam lets your team build cobots together from anywhere.

“Many robotic software ecosystems out there are cryptic and difficult to use, whereas Viam has allowed me to get off the ground pretty quickly and perform many of the operations in automation for sophisticated hardware much faster.”
—Andrew Barkan, Roboticist and Co-Founder of Sol Robotics

THE PROBLEM

“We are aiming to develop a low-cost robotic platform that aims to improve the performance over a lot of the conventional robotic platforms out there on the market today.”

Industries like agriculture and manufacturing are ripe for robotic automation, but the cost and rigidness of traditional cobot hardware often hold back adoption. Sol Robotics is tackling these issues head-on with a fresh approach to cobot hardware design.

Their low-cost cobot hardware platform, HERA, integrates a novel actuation system that enables the cobot to reach incredible distances while ensuring the safety and durability critical to operating alongside people.

Given the groundbreaking nature of HERA, the Sol Robotics team faced challenges in the time and effort involved in integrating different components of the platform. Sol Robotics looked for a robotics software platform that could:

• Make it easy to swap out various hardware components, speeding up hardware testing and iteration
• Allow the team to explore new hardware directions without the complexity that traditional robotics software can introduce
• Complement Sol Robotics’ hardware strengths with flexible and secure robotics software

THE SOLUTION

“Viam has been a really great tool for us because it allows us to integrate different components of our robotic platform seamlessly and without a lot of overhead while we're still growing as a company.”

Viam’s composable approach to robotics software not only makes it compatible with HERA but also greatly simplifies the process of developing and deploying new cobots.

The Sol Robotics team has implemented software control of HERA as a custom modular component in Viam against the arm API, making actions like “MoveToPosition” a breeze to make or modify. That means they no longer need to worry about implementing low-level commands or integrations, and can instead focus on improving HERA’s core functionality.

For example, if the goal is to have the cobot paint a wall, they can focus on implementing the algorithm for navigating features of the wall as Viam takes care of the lower-level kinematics involved.

And their team isn’t the only one to benefit— businesses building cobot applications with HERA can use Viam in the same way to getup and running quickly.

• Viam SDKs and custom resources make it easy to write control software that builds upon the HERA cobot platform
• The abstracted arm component API simplifies testing various actions with different hardware components
• Built-in fleet management in Viam enables teams to collaborate on building cobots from wherever they are

THE IMPACT

“The Sol Robotics platform is going to be a great candidate for automation in agriculture and construction, which are two of the largest markets we feel that are ripe for robotic automation.”

Using Viam’s software to build on Sol Robotics’ cobot hardware does more than just accelerate development. It’s about opening up the possibilities for cobots to help more businesses take advantage of automation.

Sol Robotics’ hardware platform is designed to be adaptable and extensible, perfectly aligned with Viam’s composable approach to robotics software.

With Sol Robotics and Viam together, businesses have the flexibility to use the best cobot hardware and software tools available for building robots that will improve our world.

Businesses can use Sol Robotics’ cobot technology and Viam’s software platform together to:

• Reduce the overhead of implementing changes to robotic systems as your company grows and expands its solutions
• Manage data and fleets of robots in production at scale while continuing to prototype rapidly
• Integrate higher-level services like motion planning, machine learning, and vision to develop new cobot applications

Ready to build with Sol Robotics and Viam?

Learn more about Sol Robotics' cobot technology on their website, and check out our documentation to explore the Viam robotics software platform.