Bosch’s new AIoT platform provides real-time data on energy consumption at manufacturing sites

Robert Bosch Engineering and Business Solutions (RBEI) has unveiled the new Phantom Edge – an AIoT platform, which combines the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) to provide a real-time view of electrical energy consumption, operating usage, electrical parameters, and appliance-level information.

Phantom Edge uses non-intrusive sensors to collect power signatures and ML (Machine Learning) algorithms sitting on the edge, analyses these signatures to provide a real-time view of electrical energy consumption, operating usage, electrical parameters, and appliance-level information and thereby creates its digital twin. This information helps in improvising sustainability and productivity metrics. It also provides input on critical safety, machine maintenance and early warnings on malfunction.

The Phantom Edge device is built with Arm Cortex, i.MX 8M Mini Dual lite, 1.6 GHz Speed processor, 2GB RAM to perform powerful AI and ML algorithms, and 8GB internal memory to store the data during the connectivity loss. The device supports Wi – Fi, 2G, 3G, 4G for cloud connectivity and BLE, RS 232 serial and ethernet for communicating with peripheral sensors/assets. The solution also comes with a cloud-based SaaS application with a capability to give real time alerts and notifications for customers to act upon the asset’s productivity and energy consumption.

 Dattatri Salagame, president and MD, RBEI said, “With over 130 years of deep engineering experience solving real-world problems and catering to the demand for niche solutions across industries, Bosch’s Phantom Edge is a powerful ecosystem designed to be leveraged for industries who are jump starting their digital journey. Phantom Edge has potential applications in a number of industries like healthcare, retail, commercial spaces, agriculture, mobility, industrial manufacturing etc. RBEI’s vision is to provide smart solutions for the globe and Phantom Edge is a step in that direction. We believe we have built a product that is truly invented for life.”

Kaushik Sarkar, SVP and Director, RBEI said, “Bosch Phantom Edge will stand as a strong pillar for various industries to significantly improve their machine efficiency which is the cornerstone to secure India’s digital future. For Industry 4.0 to reap its true benefits, there needs to be a seamless integration of the value stream that includes the entire supply chain. Also, Bosch Phantom Edge’s non-intrusive design eliminates the concerns of meeting industry standards for the OEMs. As customers form the core of our focus, the Phantom Edge is developed as a perfect solution for monitoring equipment status and metrics in real-time.”

The company says Phantom Edge is a powerful ecosystem on the cloud and on-premise that delivers manufacturing efficiency, real-time alerts and notifications for timely actionable insights. A user configurable portal and dashboard provides transparency and visibility of factory operations, worker productivity and machine effectiveness. It automates data capture and measures accurate down times by providing timely, bias-free and precise data that form the basis for managers to set targets, track performance, analyze, and improve on a continuous basis. Currently, Phantom Edge has 2 major uses cases:

Phantom Real-Time Energy Monitoring for retail, residential and commercial Spaces: It provides granular energy consumption data at an asset level, without the need of installing submeters, which enables asset benchmarking, identifying anomalies and drives behavioural change for achieving energy savings and sustainability goals.

Phantom Connected Machines for discrete manufacturing SMEs: It provides real-time information on machines OEE (availability, performance and quality), part count and energy consumption, thereby enabling productivity and sustainability efforts in the organisation in a cost-effective and non-intrusive way without the need for expensive on-site IT infrastructure.

Bosch Phantom Edge is designed to be leveraged for multiple industries to jump start a digital journey through customised advisory sessions, consulting workshops and a content rich knowledge portal for asset intensive industries such as automotive, retail stores, commercial spaces, manufacturing setups, industrial production units, SMEs, airports, oil & gas terminals, construction and many more industries.