Formant's Solution for Getting the Most Out of Spot

Formant is the best way to expand and extend Spot’s capabilities.

Hit the ground running with Formant. Maximize the value of your Spot investment by leveraging Formant’s pre-integrated and tested command center that provides the basis to customize and tailor the data feeds, missions, reporting, and analytics needed to deliver business value on day one.

Formant is a data and operations platform that provides a centralized command center for your Spot-based solution. Formant extends Spot’s inherent capabilities with enhanced teleoperation, connectivity, data management, and real-time observability to empower Spot’s autonomy and optimize your solution. With Formant, you extend auto walk planning and execution and have the most robust data collection, enrichment, and analytics of all data streams collected.

How are you using Spot?

Common use cases for Spot and how Formant enhances and advances these capabilities:

INSPECTIONS

Leveraging Spot to conduct routine site inspections allows organizations to increase the number and frequency of sites covered by a single inspector. Offering organizations a way to scale operations, reduce the number of field visits required, and improve the effectiveness of the visits that do occur.

INvestigate Events

Remotely operating Spot into tight or dangerous environments to do a more in-depth investigation of an area of interest. Collecting real-time video, audio, telemetry, and sensor data provides a comprehensive view of the environment and makes it easy to determine how to resolve the issue.

Logistics

Use Spot to conduct logistics and delivery in hard-to-navigate locations. Preprogram a number of missions and leverage the agility and mobility of Spot to navigate through the obstacles autonomously. Instantly take control of Spot remotely if it becomes stuck to get back on mission quickly.

The Formant data and operations platform allows Spot owners to hit the ground running with advanced capabilities that maximize the value of their investment.

Instant command center

Formant’s centralized command center gives robot service providers a way to monitor performance and manage configuration for an entire fleet of robots cost-effectively and efficiently. Visualize all data collected from the field and aggregate it based on location, customer, and fleet to track and quickly respond to trends or environmental changes. A centralized command center provides the operations team the data, tools, and resources needed to efficiently manage a growing fleet of robots without increasing supporting resources at the same rate.

Out of the box integration

If you own a Spot CORE or CORE AI, we've already done all the heavy lifting. Formant's out-of-the-box Spot solution offers you immediate access to 100's of data channels from standard payloads that can be used to build user-specific views into relevant operational information. No matter your application or the job you have planned for Spot, Formant can speed the deployment, enhance customization of the application, and ensure a central view of all the data streams for superior monitoring and issue resolution.

Remote command and control

Untether your Spot with a real-time bi-directional communication channel. That’s right; this is so much more than just teleoperations. Formant gives you the ability to see, hear and communicate via Spot remotely. This programmable real-time interface opens up infinite possibilities for inspections, security, hospitality, and other telepresence use cases.

Mission planning

Formant makes planning and executing predefined missions a snap. We have extended the auto walk capabilities found on Spot core and given you the ability to plan, execute, and analyze missions from a single easy to use interface. Monitor these missions in real-time and instantly take control of the device to alter the mission or get the device out of a pickle.

Superior visualization

Formant observability combines the collection of data streams with dynamic data ingestion and superior navigation to provide a user experience that is easy for anyone in the organization to operate. Reviewing all data in context provides superior diagnostic capabilities, getting to the root cause quicker. The sheer volume of data available to collect can be overwhelming, but Formant has built-in several ways to manage data ingestion and ensure you have the right data at the right time for the right cost. Timeline-based navigation makes it easy to review and share comments and observations of an event.

Customize and expand

Leverage our extensive experience with Spot to explore and productize all the ways Spot can support your business now and in the future. Formant data and operations platform provides the basis for all capabilities but we have extensive expertise in connecting and building application-specific solutions, so no matter how you want to use Spot we can help you tailor and build an application that works for you quickly.

Recent deployments

Here are some of the specific payloads and deployments we have executed recently:

Integration of the Spot CORE and Spot CORE AI on-board compute platform. Deployment of autonomous navigation for challenging terrain and environments using the Spot Enhanced Autonomy Package.

Integration of sensing payloads including:

PTZ & ring camera on the Spot CAM+ for automated gauge & infrastructure inspection
FLIR thermal imaging camera for anomaly detection
FLIR MUVE 360 optical gas imaging sensor for leak detection
Trimble X7 laser scanner Integration with Spot CORE AI advanced compute payload for machine learning at the edge.

Integration with Spot CORE AI advanced compute payload for machine learning at the edge.

Access to pre-release SDK access, documentation, and technical deep dives on both the Spot Dock (for automated charging), and the Spot Arm (for manipulation).

Cradlepoint and Peplink LTE modem integration, including GPS.

Custom payload builds, including power integration, enclosure design, and robot movement profile tuning.

Navigation & payload testing in extremely varied environments, from power substations and factory floors to city sidewalks, the beach and the middle of the woods.

Development of data and workflow integration into enterprise systems.

Unleash Spot