HAL Robotics: The IoT Connoisseurs

Many industry experts and excited customers have elucidated the umbrella term ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) as the next phase of the industrial revolution or the next internet. Why? “Because it will build a solid foundation for business, government, and customers to communicate with the physical world through connected devices embedded in our everyday environment,” explains Prabhakar Chaudhary, Founder & MD of HAL Robotics. “We are on a mission to connect the world through intelligent devices, which are powered using decision science on IoT. Through this we enable business owners to monitor their critical matrices in real time.” The company focuses on injecting intelligence into non-living objects and make them intuitive through commands and building decision science algorithms. HAL Robotics’ offerings empower its clients to monitor business matrics in real time. The firm’s 360-degree solutions consist of intelligent hardware fused with decision science which render real-time updates and visibility of the assets critical for business.

The firm offers three IoT solutions—unidirectional sensor SNITCH, advanced bi-directional sensor NEO, and the 2-way wireless IoT gateway ROBO — which assist organizations to enhance the potency of their operations and add value to production rates. The ‘unidirectional SNITCH’ transmits only relevant information to the IoT gateway whereas the ‘advanced NEO’ receives commands to control the asset. HAL Robotics has two end-to-end use cases which are already being used by enterprise customers.

With RoboTrack, an asset monitoring solution for supply chain management, the firm gives clients the real-time monitoring ability of their fleets, allowing them to improve vehicle maintenance, route navigation, and enhance inventory management. It also has a wireless solution which can track inventory and assets of merchandise shipments to enterprise-owned tablets.

Illustrating the benefits of RoboTrack, Chaudhary cites the example of a petrochemical company. The challenge here was to reduce the pilferage and damage due to contamination in the petrochemical unit and improve its fleet management capability. HAL Robotics developed a two-way IoT system that could track the current location of a vehicle and improve its monitoring. The firm further installed sensors at multiple points of the vehicle that could detect if any product is missing from the vehicle. The company also deployed an electronic lock in the vehicle which can be operated through a remote, only by authorized personals at authorized location On the software side, the company implemented data science and machine learning tools to monitor the unusual behaviour of the vehicles. The association with HAL Robotics allowed the petrochemical company to develop a robust structure to monitor the fleet activities and attenuate thieveries.

The key factor which differentiates the firm from other players in the space is that its ‘smart sensors’ can be managed using a mobile phone or a web app. This allows users to remotely and easily customize the sensors as per changing organizational requirements.

Automation has today become a primary tool to address mission-critical workflow issues. “The world is getting connected, the cost of cloud computing is shrinking, and mobile connectivity is mounting exponentially,” Chaudhary adds. Moving ahead, HAL Robotics intends to hone its skills further to stay relevant, competitive, and carve out a new lane in the IoT marketplace. The central area of focus for the company at present is to help manufacturing units to leverage the power of IoT in decision science. “In the current scenario, our priority is to address the needs of our clients and help them garner competitive advantage with our portfolio of IoT solutions and wireless products,” concludes Chaudhary.