SICK AG announced at a June virtual press conference a range of new digital solutions designed to help users gain more value from their sensor data. Notably, PeopleCounter and DistanceGuard apps are integrated into the company’s 2D and 3D LiDAR sensors and are helping its customers adhere to social distancing requirements in public and predefined spaces.
“Applications are becoming ever more demanding in terms of flexibility and performance,” noted TimoMennle, SICK AppSpace strategic product manager. “These COVID-19 solutions deployed on our programmable LiDAR sensors are the sort of high-performance devices we can develop tailored to specific tasks.”
Because the sensor solutions do not process any personal information, they enable companies to adhere not only to the requisite hygiene, but also data privacy requirements. Operators of institutions of public life as well as those that deal in tourism, food, retail and various other industries can profit from a simple solution that easily allows them to maintain maximum utilization of space and the minimum distance between people, Mennle said.
Also, augmenting the company’s existing AppSpace offering is the new IntegrationSpace, where users can find all of the digital services offered by SICK and its partners. Here, companies in manufacturing and logistics can search for the help they need to smoothly integrate the new digital processes of Industry 4.0.
“Today, customers come to us with problems which have nothing to do with classical automation engineering dealing with sensor systems, logic and actuator engineering,” explained Christoph Müller, senior vice president product management at SICK. “Instead, they want to make business processes much more efficient. So the sensor gathers data which helps solve the problem and brings it to the data level.”
There, the SICK IntegrationSpace platform makes it possible to access the virtual representation of the sensor and its data. Users can easily create individual SensorApps on their own—without programming skills—to solve new automation tasks.
“Automation concepts are rarely standard,” added Mennle. “Even if you are supposedly dealing with a standard problem, additional configuration and customization work is required for many projects. These are details that could quickly result in higher costs and delays during installation. With the IntegrationSpace platform, SICK customers can create their own individualized SensorApps to solve individual sensor applications—without having to program anything.”
