Robots are blowing away the digital world with its unique and extraordinary abilities to perform tasks in an eye blink that human beings take hours, or even days to accomplish. Robots are no longer confined to warehouses, where they arrange and assemble heavy machinery. They have evolved to assist human surgeons and even surveil and support operations in wars.

A recent study says that the robots will also bring about a “seismic shift” in the way human beings work with machines and algorithms. The continuously dynamic technology requires a lot of work that is highly impossible and extremely expensive. However, the advent of robots eases the job, as it needs least manual intervention and produces more accurate and satisfying results. Most of the benefits of robots are noticeable in productivity, safety, and in saving time and money.

What Could Be The Reason?

AI/ML

An important reason that makes robots more capable and efficient is its alliance with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML). This combination of robots and AI/ML results in better efficiency and productivity as they introduce flexibility and learning capabilities in the previous rigid applications. Robots inculcated with AI and ML are widely used in customer service sector, where they interact with their customers. The more these robots interact with humans, the more they learn.

Also, these robots with AI can perform visual inspection, acoustic inspection, and prescriptive repair. They can spot out defects such as slight chips in paint or broken tabs, sense the variations in vibrations or sound in automobile engines without having to dismantle the product and they can predict any kind of equipment failures well in advance and offer solutions and guidance to fix them.

Internet of Things (IoT)

Organizations have started adopting IoT solutions and using IoT embedded systems for various applications that improve instore operations such as increasing purchases, reducing robbery, enabling inventory management, and enhancing the consumer shopping experience. Through IoT, physical retailers in brick and mortar shops can strongly compete against online challengers. They can regain the market share they lost and attract more consumers into the store, thus making it easier for them to buy more while saving money.

Also, IoT plays a pivotal role when it comes to logistics and supply chain management as an IoT enabled system can make a revolution. The nexus of robots, AI and IoT will result in robot systems having high capabilities to perform complex tasks autonomously.

Robotic Arm – A Helping Hand 

Ever thought of having a third arm that just allows you to do extra tasks like making a call when you are driving a car or carrying many bags with no difficulties? Wouldn’t that just be amazing to have a helping hand when you really need to do multiple things at a time? Well, that’s exactly what a robotic arm can offer you in order to make your life better and easier. Such smart and intelligent robotic arms attract business leaders and organizations in the market by promising the ability to accelerate their business and digital transformation journey. The best part is that these robots can do all this without the cost and effort required to traditional application development and testing approaches.

Apparently, adoption of robotic arms is very common in various industries since the amount of time and energy spent by these arms is far lesser than what human beings spend to perform a specific task. Be it in a warehouse or in fashion retail, robots are just rocking and changing the way in which things used to work initially.

Why Do We Need an Arm? 

Apart from helping the customers to find what they are looking for or just taking care of the inventory management, these robotic arms are dominating the retail industry in different ways. The well-known POS systems that serve as multi-functional tools are used widely and are proved very useful and efficient. In order to have the POS systems function without any disruption organizations are embracing robotic arms. However, what could possibly go wrong with the POS systems? There are certain challenges that occur frequently while working with the POS system manually, since these tasks are mostly tedious and monotonous.

The following are some of the challenges that occur often while trying to test a POS system manually.

  • Multiple Configurations
  • Handling Peripheral Devices
  • Complex Interfaces
  • PCI Compliances

The list of challenges continues since these POS devices are pricey, the number of updates they require are plenty and each update is stacked upon the previous technology used which makes it super complicated and an expensive job. In addition, the integration process is more than just intricate and the other functionalities should be free of errors for efficiency.

It can be relieving to say that most of the listed challenges can be addressed using automation solutions but there exists certain limitations, which hinders to achieve 100% automation results. Tasks like scanning a bar code, swiping a card, pin-pad entry, and opening and closing cash drawers involve peripheral devices, which definitely need manual intervention. These factors make it difficult to automate which results in the need for a combination of automation and manual testing.

How Can They Do This? 

No matter how difficult or boring this job is, it is to be mentioned that testing a POS system is of huge importance that no organization is ready to compromise. That is the reason why the robotic arms came into existence that makes testing a POS system an easy job. As a forerunner, We introduced the Digital Commerce quality automation framework (DCqaf), which automated almost 60% of the entire test suite. However, for various card transactions, each test case scenario had to be checked manually. 30% of the test cases are related to Europay Mastercard and Visa (EMV) and a manual testing process of each of these test cases was burdening when it came to resources and cash flow.

As a result, there was a need for a mighty automation solution in the pipeline and that was exactly what we have come up with. Our offer comes in the form of a robotic arm, which is fully designed and built in-house. The arm is connected to the POS machine port and built with high torque stepper, which can be integrated with a Graphical User Interface (GUI). This GUI bridges the gaps between the automation code and the arm. This setup also consists of a card rack that can hold up to 5 cards at a time and this can be increased according to the requirement. The arm is capable of calibrating different dimensions of the pin pad device. Three sensors are connected to the machine to detect the actions performed by the arm. Once the action is detected, a pop-up is triggered to confirm the completion of each action.

Testing a POS system will not be repetitive and tedious anymore. With Aspire’s Robotic Arm Solution you can easily perform any task that earlier required the combination of automation and manual testing. The ROI is huge and the need for human intervention is lesser than ever before allowing them to focus on other tasks. The robotic arm is open for business and it is now your call to acquire what is best for the growth of your organization!

The step-by-step procedure of the functionality of the robotic arm is briefed in the demonstration video. Watch here.

To know more about our robotic arm and the solutions it offers. 

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