Your Solution for Reliability, Mobility, High Throughput, Flexibility, Fast Changeovers, Low Costs, Innovative Processes
Explore a wide range of use cases in a variety of industries
Key Advantages


Efficiency

Overhead

Profits
system architecture
Increase Flexibility and Deployment Speed

Fast and Simple Deployment
Streamlined installation with fewer cables
Fewer cables require less time and effort to measure cable lengths, match connections and affix cables to infrastructure, particularly in obstruction-filled operations areas. Faster deployment means lower overhead!
Easy System Relocation
Efficient disassembly, transport and reassembly
Complex physical networks of cables, connectors and plugs often require extensive testing, troubleshooting and optimization with each location change. Wireless systems meanwhile can be relocated with ease.
performance & operations
Improve Production System Efficiency

Increased Uptime
Fewer errors due to fewer weak points
Many M2M setups contain fragile points of failure such as slip rings, drag chains and cable connectors, which frequently break and incur high downtime and repair costs. Replacing key components within these weak points with wireless links significantly increases system uptime, raises production targets and reduces maintenance.
Streamlined Changeovers
Faster and simpler system reconfiguration
System changeovers are faster and easier with industrial-grade wireless networks, often conducted automatically and entirely on the software side when combined with battery-driven mobile setups. Less downtime and fewer dedicated personnel are required.
Efficient Retooling
Quick and frictionless tool changes
System tools can now be remotely disconnected and reconnected with ease over industrial wireless networks. Fragile plugs and connectors wear down with frequent use and are a key cause of production downtime. Now they can be a thing of the past!
maintenance & repairs
Streamline System Upkeep

Near-Instant Error Diagnosis
Easy error detection over remote monitors
Error diagnosis in cable-based industrial networks is often difficult and time-consuming due to obstructed access to physical connectors. Wireless networks meanwhile allow faults to simply be identified from a network-linked tablet. Man-hours and system downtime are thus greatly streamlined.
system enhancements
Prepare for the Future

Storage
Efficient automated storage and cataloguing systems have become essential as Industry 4.0 continues to evolve. A ultra-reliable low-latency communications (URLLC) solution capable of processing large numbers of distinct elements is required to meet demand.
Logistics
Autonomous and automated transport vehicles are a foundational component of Industry 4.0. Untethered mobile setups are now possible, guided entirely via programmed settings and able to reconfigure themselves on the fly.
Production
Smart production methods are required to meet emerging business models and increasingly bespoke customer requirements. Key for success are highly mobile and modular production setups, enabled by industrial-grade wireless networks.
Tools
Industry 4.0 workers require precise yet easy-to-use tools to oversee and optimize complex automated processes made up of large numbers of moving assets. EchoRing's decentralized network architecture provides the perfect solution.
USe cases
Storage
Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems
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Current Situation
Guided AS/RS systems provide power and data to retrieval vehicles over live rails.
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Pain Point
Retrieval vehicles undergoing repairs must be deactivated to ensure worker safety, which also prevents other vehicles from operating in the same corridor. A single repair job therefore greatly impacts an entire system's performance level.
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Solution
Thanks to EchoRing, rails are no longer live and are instead used only for guidance and balance - vehicles are battery-powered and controlled wirelessly. Workers can now repair a single unit without shutting down an entire corridor, thus minimizing downtime for the entire system.
Transport Racks for In-Process Storage
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Current Situation
Transport racks are an important asset for in-process storage on production lines - particularly in automotive setups where bespoke customization and "just-in-time" delivery require efficient and accessible storage solutions. Drag chains and visible light communications (VLC) are currently employed to coordinate transport racks and assembly line robots.
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Pain Point
Drag chains are often vulnerable to wear and tear due to being in constant motion, while VLCs are prone to disruption in dusty and motion-filled shop floors. These common sources of system failure result in expensive downtimes.
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Solution
EchoRing's decentralized "echo station" protocol ensures both cable-like performance and wireless flexibility with none of the wear and tear or signal disruption of current solutions. System availability is maximized while maintenance cycles are minimized.
Logistics
Autonomous Transport Vehicles
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Current Situation
Fast and efficient autonomous transport systems are increasingly employed in intralogistics setups, connected and synchronized over wireless networks.
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Pain Point
Adoption of autonomous transports is somewhat hampered by the limits of current wireless M2M solutions. Reliability and synchronization must meet the same safety standards as traditional wired or manual setups before full adoption can occur.
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Solution
EchoRing's industrial network solution combines prioritized data transfer with a patented "echo station" protocol, ensuring cable-like performance with the wireless flexibility. With smart network planning, transports can now operate reliably and in real-time over an entire shop floor.
Slotted Waveguides
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Current Situation
Slotted waveguides transmitting control and safety data are commonly employed in production transport setups.
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Pain Point
Critical components within slotted waveguides are highly vulnerable to wear and tear due to being in constant motion. Regular maintenance downtime is often required, which presents a key obstacle for operators wanting to adopt 24/7 "lights out" manufacturing.
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Solution
EchoRing replaces fragile wires and components within slotted waveguides with URLLC wireless links, greatly increasing system uptime and durability.
Conductor Rails
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Current Situation
Conductor rails are a reliable mainstay of automated manufacturing, ensuring uninterrupted power and data transmission to assembly line transport vehicles.
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Pain Point
Conductor rails are often very inflexible as well as expensive and time-consuming to modify. These costs are especially apparent in assembly lines that must undergo frequent changeovers to meet individualized order requirements.
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Solution
Conductor rails are a thing of the past thanks to EchoRing! Prioritized data transfer combined with a patented "echo station" protocol ensures unbroken real-time wireless connectivity over the entire shop floor. Untethered production lines composed of synchronized battery-powered mobile units can now reconfigure themselves on the fly, assembling wider product ranges in shorter production cycles with fewer resources.
Intralogistic Elevator Systems
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Current Situation
Industrial elevator systems play a crucial role in multi-storey factory intralogistics. Elevators must be closely coordinated at all times with autonomous transport paths to ensure top efficiency.
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Pain Point
Elevators are a notorious transport bottleneck that can stall access to entire warehouse floors with a single mis-timed transit path. Since they still rely on cables to ensure safety and reliability, this often results in expensive slowdowns.
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Solution
Thanks to EchoRing's seamless roaming, dense networks of distributed sensors and wireless data links can tightly synchronize elevator control systems with autonomous vehicle fleets. Combined with machine learning, data gathering and traffic prioritization, these networks can help operators develop and optimize highly efficient intralogistics plans.
Cooperative Heavy Cargo Transports
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Current Situation
Heavy transport is currently conducted with a range of specialized machinery, each of which require separate operator's permits and safety procedures.
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Pain Point
Heavy machine transport is slow, expensive and inflexible, requiring the purchase and installation of heavy machinery that is only useful for a single task, along with hiring/training specialized personnel. Automation in this field has also begun to plateau, due to inherent hardware and process limitations.
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Solution
EchoRing's ad-hoc, infrastructure-free network architecture enables platoons of automated transport vehicles (AGVs) to synchronize and operate together in real time with rock-solid reliability. This solution is highly flexible and cost-efficient, as these transports can be employed for other tasks as well.
Optimized Transport Flows
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Current Situation
Automated guided vehicles must significantly reduce transit speed to avoid collisions at transport intersections and other bottlenecks.
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Pain Point
Slowdowns at transport bottlenecks represent wasted production throughput potential. Additional vehicles are often required to cover the shortfall.
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Solution
EchoRing enables realtime wireless M2M communications even in crowded and ever-changing propagation environments. Near-instant network access and direct links between participants optimize intralogistics transport to the fullest, maximizing cost-efficiency.
Production Line Turntables
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Current Situation
Production line turntables are a useful feature of modern production lines, allowing multiple workpieces to be processed in quick succession from a single rotating rack.
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Pain Point
Turntables require regular and costly maintenance cycles due to constant wear and tear on their fragile components, particularly slip rings employed for power and data transmission.
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Solution
EchoRing replaces many internal points of failure with friction-free wireless links, greatly extending maintenance cycles and increasing throughput efficiency. The solution's fast reconnect feature also facilitates component changes during repairs.
Workpiece Conveyor Belts
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Current Situation
Conveyor belts are commonly employed in high-throughput industrial setups to swiftly transport workpieces between workstations.
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Pain Point
Conveyor belts are often expensive to maintain and frequently break down due to their complex mechanical layouts. They also prove inflexible when changing over production lines for new products.
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Solution
EchoRing replaces many internal points of failure with friction-free wireless links, greatly extending maintenance cycles, simplifying retrofits and increasing throughput efficiency. EchoRing also features best-effort transmission for non-essential traffic such as data monitoring, which can be applied to optimize processes.
Drag Chains for Linear Robots
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Current Situation
Drag chains are shielded power and communications cables designed to survive in harsh industrial environments. Their reliability in synchronizing assembly robots has become the industry standard.
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Pain Point
Despite their reliability, drag chains are still prone to wear and tear from constant motion, which often results in sudden system failures and expensive production downtimes.
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Solution
EchoRing provides wireless flexibility with cable-like speed, reliability and security, removing the need for drag chains in critical M2M controls. Fewer physical points of failure result in higher system durability, as well as fewer maintenance cycles in smaller segments of a production line.
Production
Sensor/Tool Controls for Assembly Robots
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Current Situation
Sensors and tools on assembly robots are typically controlled via insulated cables affixed to the robots' chassis. These tools are frequently modified or exchanged with each new production job.
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Pain Point
Even with shielding, these cables are subject to wear and tear and are often prone to failure from constant motion in harsh industrial environments. Frequent hardware-related downtimes present a key obstacle for 24/7 "lights out" manufacturing.
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Solution
EchoRing provides cable-like speed and reliability to replace cables in critical robot controls. Fewer physical points of failure result fewer maintenance cycles and higher production throughput. EchoRing can also be employed as a backup redundancy measure for non-replaceable cables, thanks to its near-instant client network access.
Rail-Guided Workpiece Shuttles
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Current Situation
Large workpieces (such as car chassis) in production lines are often transited between workstations by rail-guided shuttles suspended above the shop floor. Complex cable layouts ensure real-time power and data connectivity.
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Pain Point
Cables, despite their moment-to-moment speed and reliability, are constantly subject to wear and tear and are frequently prone to failure, resulting in expensive downtimes for diagnosis and repairs.
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Solution
EchoRing revolutionizes M2M communications, combining cable-like speed, reliability and security with the flexibility of wireless networks. Fewer physical points of failure result in durable, mobile setups with far fewer maintenance cycles.
Modular Hardware Retrofits
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Current Situation
Legacy industrial setups must incorporate emerging machine concepts and processes to compete with new "smart" manufacturing plants. For this to happen, seamless integration of new hardware via modular retrofits is key.
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Pain Point
Upgrading fixed production lines is often lengthy, expensive and complex due to extensive cable networks and fixed production elements. The entire process must often be redesigned, retooled and undergo extensive performance testing, incurring huge costs for the operator.
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Solution
Production line upgrades are now far easier with modular hardware retrofits. Segments of a production line can easily be swapped in and out as necessary, thanks to wireless M2M solutions such as EchoRing replacing complex cable layouts.
Distributed Hydraulic Lift Systems
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Current Situation
Hydraulic lifts are essential in production facilities that assemble larger machines and products. They are typically static, wired apparatus specifically designed for lifting and supporting heavy materials.
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Pain Point
Lifts suffer from a lack of mobility and flexibility due to their extensive cable connections, requiring lengthy setup and operations procedures to ensure coordination and abide by safety standards.
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Solution
EchoRing's patented "echo station" protocol ensures unbroken real-time wireless connectivity between critical industrial controls, upholding safety standards while greatly increasing flexibility. Fewer cables combined with power-independent battery solutions enable faster setup processes with fewer personnel.
Height-Adjustable Mobile Workstations
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Current Situation
In order meet demand, modern final assembly lines must incorporate adjustable workstations that can accommodate a wide range of product types and sizes.
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Pain Point
Adjustable assembly line architectures still have plenty of room for improvement in both flexibility and ease of use. A key avenue in this regard is mobile wireless battery-driven systems, however worker safety standards must be ensured before wide adoption can take place.
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Solution
EchoRing's patented "echo station" system ensures unbroken realtime connection for critical controls, ensuring industry safety standards while greatly increasing flexibility. Operators are now empowered to design highly flexible and easy adjustable assembly line concepts.
Collaborative Production Setups
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Current Situation
Modern production lines are typically independent closed systems, designed to both ensure worker safety and to prevent production errors from cascading throughout the rest of the shop floor.
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Pain Point
Self-contained production lines are very inflexible, expensive and require a large shop floor footprint to accommodate required safety measures, such as dividers. Emerging markets for increasingly bespoke products require frequent system changeovers to meet demand, which imposes a high overhead on operators.
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Solution
EchoRing's wireless network solution supports collaborative production setups, intersecting multiple production lines and tightly coordinating a diverse range of multi-purpose production assets such as assembly robots, autonomous vehicles and workers while still ensuring workplace safety and network security.
Tools
Flexible and Versatile Smart Power Tools
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Current Situation
Smart power tools can be programmed to detect the exact amount of energy to apply to a workpiece, thus minimizing damaged assets, workplace accidents and lost production time.
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Pain Point
Unreliable wireless networks combined with high data and power requirements have so far limited smart tools' flexibility and versatility, preventing wider adoption and further innovation.
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Solution
Industrial grade wireless solutions such as EchoRing can now untether smart tools while still upholding cable-like reliability, greatly multiplying their effectiveness. Innovative new concepts such as augmented reality, edge control and realtime links to production control systems can now be explored with fewer roadblocks.
Handheld System Monitoring/Optimization
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Current Situation
Current industrial controls are typically rooted to a single location on the production floor - a reliable setup that ensures worker safety and has been in use for decades.
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Pain Point
Operators at fixed workstations must all coordinate for production to run smoothly, which is often difficult due to a lack of mobility. Errors and miscommunication often result and can lead to accidents and stalled production.
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Solution
EchoRing enables a single operator to reliably oversee and optimize an entire production line from a handheld wireless tablet. Scalability is improved as well, as fewer specialized workers are required for each production system while additional assembly lines can be added with ease.
Robotic Manipulators in High-Risk Environments
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Current Situation
Robotic manipulators are increasingly common in a wide range of fields from surgery to hazmat disposal, facilitated by emerging technologies such as VR and machine learning.
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Pain Point
Manipulators are still limited to fixed wired setups due to strict reliability requirements: zero signal disruption and latencies of no higher than 10ms. As a result, many potential adopters are locked out due to a lack of mobility and accessibility.
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Solution
Realtime and ultra-reliable wireless manipulator setups are now possible with EchoRing. Service-level performance within cycle times of 10ms is guaranteed, paving the way for wide adoption.
Testimonials
Texas Instruments has given R3, the only company in the world, access to the source code of our WiLink 8 chip family. This shows how much we trust the company and its employees.

For more than a year we have been working with R3. Fully convinced of the technology we will start integrating the EchoRing Ethernet Bridge in our upcoming product lines as soon as possible.

The technical maturation process of 5G will take at least another five years. So, if you want to wait for 5G, ok, you can do that, but I would highly recommend choosing R3 products today.

We support R3 with our know-how and experience in industrializing their products and bringing hardware design and manufacturing in line with the relevant IPC guidelines together. We share the enthusiasm I experienced during my visit to R3 and are equally confident of a successful future for the EchoRing technology.

The innovative concept, the performance of EchoRing, the technical expertise of the staff as well as the friendly, comprehensive and fast support in the preparation of a first test convinced me of R3 and EchoRing.

Applications FAQ
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How is EchoRing deployed?
Each client represents a unique set of software/hardware requirements to fulfill. Solutions range from easy integration via our Rollout Kit and Ethernet Bridges to deep integration via our System-On-Module, or a software-only solution configured to the client’s existing hardware. R3 also provides Reference Designs for clients to develop their own EchoRing-capable hardware modules. Individual deployment plans can be determined through a series of interviews, on-site workshops and prototyping.
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Which applications is EchoRing intended for?
EchoRing is intended for any machine-to-machine application that intends to increase flexibility and scalability, lower maintenance costs and simplify engineering layouts. Smart manufacturing and warehousing currently make up the bulk of R3's client base, yet these only represent some of EchoRing's potential use cases.
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Why should I employ EchoRing over other high-performance wireless solutions?
As covered on our Technology page, EchoRing's key advantage is its quartet of real-time latency, ultra-reliability, decentralized network architecture and ease of integration. WiFi for example boasts high bandwidth but is too interruption-prone to entrust to critical systems. 5G promises both low latency and high reliability, but remains unproven for machine-to-machine applications and requires massive, expensive infrastructure overhauls to switch from wired systems. Both WiFi and 5G are also centered around a single transmitting weak point (thereby lacking signal redundancy), while EchoRing is decentralized and deterministic with no master transmitter. EchoRing is also proven, tested, currently in use and runs easily on existing infrastructure.
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In which specific areas does EchoRing reduce installation, operations or maintenance costs?
EchoRing increases flexibility and speeds up deployments, improves production system efficiency, streamlines repair and maintenance processes and supports software-based system upgrades.
Further questions?
