Year of collaboration
2021 – ongoing
Context
Creators of autonomous four-legged robots for industrial applications
ANYbotic’s end-to-end robotics solution automates industrial inspections. Their four-legged robot, ANYmal, can patrol complex and harsh environments as an autonomous data collection and analysis vehicle, giving operators valuable support monitoring and maintaining their plants.
Aim
Provide flexible documentation for a complex and developing product
With a product as groundbreaking as a walking robot for industrial applications, ANYbotics needed documentation that could help make their complex product clear and simple to use for operators, whilst still having the flexibility to quickly and easily update it as the product evolved.
The documentation needed to cover the hardware of the robot itself and help operators get the most from the inspection planning, payload control, and data analysis software.
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Challenges
Complex and evolving subject matter, with many SMEs and stakeholders
ANYbotics needed an authoring team that could help simplify and improve its authoring processes. They also needed a new tool that would give them the flexibility to keep up with a constantly evolving product.
Whilst documentation had previously been created in-house, it needed to be improved and simplified before releasing to the market. As a complete end-to-end hardware and software product, the documentation needed input from subject matter experts from different fields and an authoring team with experience in different industries.
The documentation contained lots of graphical elements, such as CAD drawings, that needed to be properly integrated into the documentation.
Solution
A simple, streamlined authoring process that can keep pace with a complex and evolving product
The 3di team:
- Helped ANYbotics simplify and improve the content of their documentation to make it clear and simple for the end user.
- Gathered input from the many subject matter experts, across different disciplines, and consolidated the information into clear and concise documentation.
- Supported the transition away from legacy authoring tools to MadCap Flare.
- Designed an information model that made use of far more graphical elements.
- Ensured the content was optimised for multilingual localization.
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Result
The 3di team:
- Made updates to, and in some cases completely rewrote, existing user guides.
- Migrated user guides over to Elwood’s documentation portal.
- Updated Elwood’s API documentation, including creating new endpoints and changes to existing endpoints.
- Customised the search functionality in the Slate API documentation site.
- Helped Elwood evaluate and implement its method for sharing its API with its customers.
- Helped Elwood’s internal documentation team get up to speed with new tools, such as Hugo, Markdown and GitHub.
Testimonial
“We had a close-out session with our partner for the CE certification. They pointed out that our user manual really impressed them. Congratulations to all the people involved.“
Project Lead at ANYbotics