Realtime Robotics has launched Resolver, a cloud-based solution that accelerates robotic workcell design and deployment from months to days, reducing engineering time by up to 50%. The move reflects a broader industry push to remove engineering drag from automation rollouts, as manufacturers contend with tighter labor markets and shifting product mixes.
Cloud-Based Planning Gains Ground
As manufacturers double down on automation, a persistent obstacle remains: the slow, labor-intensive process of deploying robotic systems. Programming motion paths, coordinating sequences, and adjusting for layout variations often extend deployment timelines by weeks or even months.
Realtime Robotics, a Boston-based automation technology firm, has released a cloud-based platform called Resolver aimed at compressing these timeframes. The software uses high-speed simulation and optimization to generate collision-free motion plans and robot sequences, reducing engineering workload by up to 50%, according to the company.
Resolver’s launch points to a larger trend in industrial automation – shifting critical deployment tasks off the plant floor and into cloud environments where they can be executed faster, at scale, and without reliance on specialized programming labor.
Manufacturers Seek to Streamline Deployment
The challenge is not adoption, robotics investments are accelerating across industries, but execution. Most bottlenecks stem not from hardware limitations, but from the complexity of programming robotic systems to operate efficiently in real-world conditions.
Tools like Resolver aim to address this by simulating thousands of task permutations in parallel, automatically identifying optimal robot paths and interlock signals. That capability is particularly valuable in high-mix, low-volume manufacturing, where line setups change frequently, and traditional deployment methods struggle to keep pace.
Resolver allows manufacturers to input their workcell configurations, task rules, and physical constraints. The system then generates executable programs that account for sequence logic, cycle time goals, and even real-world deviations in layout or tooling. Tasks that once required weeks of engineering time can now be completed in hours or less.
A Step Toward Scalable Automation
Resolver won’t remove all the friction from robotics deployment, but its release signals a maturing approach to robotics—one that prioritizes speed of execution as much as technical sophistication.
As automation shifts from isolated pilots to core production assets, the ability to deploy consistently, across multiple sites and layouts, is becoming a key differentiator. Cloud-based tools like Resolver suggest that the next wave of automation won’t just be defined by the robots themselves, but by how quickly and effectively they can be put to work.
