Data centers of Novva start in their data centers Boston Dynamics robot. The company has partnered with the engineering department of Brigham Young University, which trains robotic dogs for monitoring and safety purposes.
Novva, a data center construction company, has partnered with Brigham Young University (BYU) to deploy robotic dogs on the campus. The university has adopted the Boston Dynamics Spot robots specifically for object monitoring.
Industrial robots BYU WIRE (Wes' Industrious Robot Employee) will perform several critical functions:
● monitoring of temperature and equipment;
● greeting guests;
● confirmation of the rights of admission of people using the system of scanning and face recognition;
● and a number of other tasks, such as visual inspection of objects.
We have created a product that will save time for Novva employees so that they can focus on strategic tasks.
In our view, WIRE represents the future of the data center, ”says BYU engineering student James Green.
In July last year, Novva announced plans to develop a $ 1 billion campus in Utah with an area of 140 thousand square meters. m. The first stage, including a data center with an area of 28 thousand square meters. m and a substation with a capacity of 120 MW, should be completed in the near future. In addition to robotic dogs, the company said it plans to use drones to guard the perimeter as well.
Difficulties of implementation
We also present an alternative material , which says that robots are coming to data centers, but in the near future we should not expect dramatic changes in this area.
Robots and automation in general can replace many jobs, or free employees to do other work, or even cut staff. But humans still have one major advantage: adaptability. Our ability to cope with multifaceted challenges and sudden changes in situations, learn and improve is unmatched despite billions of dollars in research in robotics and artificial intelligence, says Joseph Marc Blumenthal
Robots in data centers
However, robots quietly found jobs in data centers. German traffic exchange company DE-CIX has released a family of automatic patch robots (Patchy McPatchbot, Sir Patchalot and Margaret Patcher). The machines are capable of manipulating fiber optic sockets in panels of traditional telecommunication racks, moving in a rectangular coordinate system.
Alibaba has gone further and claims it has a more advanced system in its five data centers - a Tianxun robot that uses artificial intelligence and can work without human intervention to automatically replace failed hard drives.
The replacement process, including automatic inspection, detection of a failed drive, and replacement, can be completed in 4 minutes.
Google also hopes to deploy advanced systems in its data centers, but is wary of the complexities that may arise in their data centers. These objects are much more complex than objects in other industries, for example, warehouses, where robotic systems have been successfully used for a long time.
Competitor Facebook is also experimenting with robots. Last year, it was revealed that the company has a Site Engineering Robotics team that has been developing robotic solutions for automation of data center infrastructure since 2019. Notable projects include robots that move around the data center to monitor the environment.
Kleyman's Switch is also betting on a future in which robotics in data centers will play a much more important role. The developer creates his own robot Switch Sentry - in fact, a camera with a 360-degree view and temperature sensors. The device moves autonomously on wheels and can also act as a guard - people will remotely take control only during incidents.
One of these telepresence robots was bought at Nvidia's Harlow data center in the UK. The company installed self-opening doors so that the robot can freely enter the hot corridors of the data center. The novelty turned out to be in demand in a pandemic, but the company will use it after the victory over the coronavirus. The company rightly notes: “The turbine room is not the best place to live - it is noisy here, it can be cold, and it can be hot. You want to be there as little as possible, besides that, not all customers want outsiders to enter the space that is fenced in for their equipment. ”