To explore potential AI use cases where cognitive robots could provide value, the Project Embodied AI team invited a select group of SAP customers to join the Physical AI and Cognitive Robots Exploration Council. One of these customers is BITZER.
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BITZER plays an important role in our everyday lives and stands for safety, health and comfort all over the world. The company’s advanced refrigeration, air conditioning and heat pump technology ensures that supermarket shelves, hotel rooms and hospital operating rooms always maintain the correct temperature, no matter how cold or warm the surrounding area is. The company’s compressors are essential for storing medicines, preserving perishable goods during transport and processing frozen products. But that’s not all: Thanks to BITZER’s technology, ice hockey players can glide over ice surfaces and breweries can ferment yeast for beer.
BITZER is a long-standing customer of RISE with SAP. And just like SAP, the company continues to innovate its products to stay at the forefront. Christian Stenzel, Vice President of Organization and IT at BITZER, has a clear vision for an SAP strategy in which the introduction and rapid use of artificial intelligence (AI) is at the forefront: “At BITZER, optimizing business processes is just as important as product innovation.”
SAP Research and Innovation is also working to advance SAP through the use of new technologies. A team is therefore currently dedicating itself to the “Project Embodied AI” initiative..As part of the concept of Embodied AI – the embodied artificial intelligence – AI is combined with a physical form. An example of this are robots that perceive their environment and can act in the real world. Embodied AI agents are a continuation of this approach: the possibilities of SAP Business AI expanded to physical operations by equipping robots with cognitive capabilities.
To explore possible use cases where cognitive robots could provide value, the Project Embodied AI team invited a select group of SAP customers, consisting of forward-thinking business leaders and innovation professionals, to join the Physical AI and Cognitive Robots Exploration Council. One of these customers is BITZER.
“Demand-driven production is essential in our business,” reports Stenzel, who immediately recognized the potential that the use of robots offers to cope with fluctuations in demand.
BITZER was already using this SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) as well SAP Extended Warehouse Management (SAP EWM) for SAP S/4HANA Cloud and therefore had the ideal software landscape for a feasibility study.
In advance of the study, the 4NE1 from NEURA, one of the most advanced humanoid robots in Europe, was virtually trained for an application in the field of order picking using the NVIDIA Isaac Sim software.
Watch video: SAP x NEURA x BITZER
New benchmark in intelligent automation
According to Stenzel, this feasibility study as part of Project Embodied AI sets new standards in intelligent automation in warehouses. The investigations provided the following results:
- Seamless integration:SAP EWM is directly linked to physical warehouse processes, eliminating the need for costly middleware.
- High autonomy: The robots performed picking tasks independently, demonstrating a high degree of task-level autonomy.
- Agility and flexibility: Robots could enable on-demand production, working around the clock and adapting to changes in demand.
- Reliable processes: Automatic creation of material orders could reduce operational errors.
Decisive step forward
According to Dr. According to Lukasz Ostrowski, Head of Embodied AI and Robotics at SAP, this feasibility study represents a significant milestone: “The feasibility study at BITZER is a big leap forward in learning first-hand how the capabilities of SAP Business AI can be extended to physical operations. Further feasibility studies are being planned as Project Embodied AI will continue to evaluate the business benefits of embodied artificial intelligence.”
Everything important at a glance
Embodied AI combines AI with a physical form, such as robots that can perceive their surroundings in the real world and act accordingly.
Embodied AI agents are a continuation of this approach and extend the capabilities of SAP Business AI into physical operations by equipping robots with cognitive abilities. The following components intertwine:
Embodied AI agents are Joule Agents that extend the functionality of digital agents to physical tasks via the Embodied AI layer. Thanks to the embodied AI layer, they can understand and evaluate the business context and their physical environment and take actions autonomously in accordance with the company’s priorities. These agents can also perform various roles such as visual inspections, inventory picking, packaging, and quality inspections.
As SAP AI operating system serves AI Foundation. AI Foundation based on SAP BTP is therefore the central entry point for, among others, SAP Knowledge Graph, SAP Business Data Cloud, Joule Studio and SAP AI Core.
Joule Agents are the ones that can be used immediately AI agents from SAP who can plan, draw logical conclusions and complete tasks independently. These agents are linked to SAP business applications and are used for intelligent automation in the digital domain. Customers can use Joule Studio to create and customize Customer Agents. The Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol ensures that agents can work together.
The Embodied AI layer acts as a “central nervous system” for embodied AI agents and provides reusable services that allow Joule agents to interact with the physical world via cognitive robots. This layer ensures that the robot technology can be standardized regardless of the manufacturer. It also controls communication between autonomous, physical systems and the digital core of SAP. This allows robotics use cases to be implemented across the entire SAP Business Suite. Services within this layer enable business tasks to be physically carried out by robots, taking relevant process guidelines into account. These services also initiate measures and workflows so that processes in the real world can also be tracked digitally.
For more information about embodied AI agents, visit the SAP Architecture Center website. Get in touch here to participate in the “Project Embodied AI” initiative.
The post BITZER supports pioneering SAP project for “Embodied AI” appeared first on SAP News Center.
