You have to love some of the technology coming from the “loveliest village.”
The latest to court the favor of athletes is the world’s first robotic tennis ball collector.
Through a partnership with Viam, a software platform for smart machines, Auburn-based Tennibot will build, prototype, and scale its trailblazing fleet of autonomous tennis assistants. The company plans to expand sales to tennis clubs and enthusiasts nationwide, according to a news release.
The partnership reflects growing widespread business interest in automation, and shows how the next generation of innovative companies are integrating data and AI to revolutionize the real-world consumer experience.
Unveiled by Tennibot last month at the inaugural RacquetX all-racquet sports conference alongside the Miami Open, the “Tennibot” robot autonomously roved a tennis court to detect and recover balls, allowing players and coaches to save up to 30% of their time otherwise spent collecting them.
The machine leverages unique data technology from Viam, ensuring every machine is updated with the latest up-to-date software to identify tennis balls, skillfully self-navigate around obstacles, and collect data to improve and optimize machine performance, the statement said.
As more Tennibot machines move into production, the company is also using the Viam platform to seamlessly and securely capture and synchronize aggregate data from machines in the field. The data then helps the Tennibot team monitor machine performance, conduct remote diagnostics, and guarantee a superior customer experience.
Inspiration for the Tennibot struck CEO and co-founder Haitham Eletrabi during a frustrating practice session, prompting the inception of the cutting-edge machine. Working with co-founder and CTO Lincoln Wang, Eletrabi navigated through an iterative process of designing, prototyping, testing, and optimization. However, encountering technical obstacles inherent to traditional fleet and machine data management motivated the collaboration with Viam.
Viam’s open-source platform provides out-of-the-box cloud pipelines designed to easily plug into machines and facilitate their monitoring and management. Its open architecture allows any machine to be interoperable and share data with the cloud and any other machine, regardless of its make or manufacturer, breaking down technological barriers that have up to now limited greater adoption of automated solutions in consumer and industrial settings.
“Before we worked with Viam, managing multiple machines and their data could only be done through a complex integration of software and authentication platforms that weren’t designed to work with machines,” said Eletrabi. “But Viam’s built-in data management pipelines snapped right into our machines and rendered that patchwork unnecessary, freeing us up to just focus on building and selling our robots.”
In addition to boosting Tennibot’s operational efficiency, Viam’s fleet management capabilities also helped the company quickly scale and speed their time-to-market.
“Viam’s cloud-based software makes it simple to check the current status of our machines at any time and deploy code to update them as needed,” said Wang. “This allows us to comfortably expand our fleet to hundreds of robots with full confidence, and accelerate machine manufacture and delivery, getting us to market faster.”
Tennibot’s integration with Viam demonstrates the software platform’s mission to unlock the full potential of automation across diverse sectors, from consumer recreation and home automation to full industrial solutions across manufacturing, infrastructure, and climate.
“We’re thrilled to provide Tennibot with the crucial features to monitor, troubleshoot, and deploy code to their machines,” said Viam founder and CEO Eliot Horowitz. “Tennibot is a great example of how Viam enables both startups and enterprises to innovate, scale, and deliver an improved customer experience through smart machines.”
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