What is the name of your product?

XPlanar

What problem does your product solve?

XPlanar combines the high speed of a conveyor belt with the flexibility of a robot and thus meets product manufacturers' requirements for higher productivity with maximum product variety (batch size of 1).

This is made possible by the free-floating planar movers, which – arbitrarily arranged above the planar tiles – make extremely flexible, precise and highly dynamic positioning possible.

For mechanical engineering this results in maximum freedom and simplification in the design of machines and plants.

What is new/innovative about it?

Product transport is revolutionised with XPlanar: The XPlanar system can make products float magnetically, as if on a magic carpet. Electromagnetic travelling fields lift the movers and can move them two-dimensionally over an area – jerk-free and without contact at speeds of up to 4 m/s and with an acceleration of 2 g and a positioning repeatability of 50 µm. And all of that noiselessly and without abrasion.

What is the product’s main benefit for the customer?

Product transport attains previously unknown flexibility. An individual product can be moved through a manufacturing plant without losing the advantages of mass production.

The machines and plants become more efficient – and that means less use of materials and energy. The size is reduced – industrial halls can be designed smaller or accept more machines. And the plants will become much more flexible. That means that fewer machines will be needed for a large variety of different products.

Machines with XPlanar can remain much longer in operation because they wear less and can easily be adapted to future products, in many cases through a software adaptation alone.

Why would you call your product “intelligent”?

Product transport gains trendsetting flexibility with XPlanar. The movers can:

Artificial intelligence thereby assists the XPlanar system in finding the highest efficiency of the entire plant. Through AI the plant thus "learns" which routes are ideal and how tailbacks can be avoided. The plant becomes increasingly intelligent during operation and can optimise itself. If the boundary conditions change, the AI adapts itself to the new requirements.

Are there any other important points that you can think of?

XPlanar is ideal for product transport tasks in all areas, especially in the pharmaceutical and food industries with their high hygiene requirements.

Sorting and picking are considerably simplified, as is the reliable handling of samples in automated laboratories and the moving of products into and out of contaminated areas.