Projects overview
XS2I4MS | Access to I4MS
01-09-2015
-28-02-2018
From Waste to Gold | From Waste to Gold , in Swedish: FrĂĄn spill till guld
01-09-2014
-17-11-2016
Trash to Cash |
01-01-2001
-01-01-2001
Zero Vibrations |
01-01-2001
-01-01-2001
DINA |
01-01-2001
-01-01-2001
COMPOSITION | Ecosystem for Collaborative Manufacturing Processes _ Intra- and Interfactory Integration and Automation
01-09-2016
-31-08-2019
See also D2.6 Lessons Learned and updated requirements report II and D8.8 Final Evaluation Report of the COMPOSITION IIMS Platform
1. Early design decisions on deployment and communication protocols were made. (Docker, MQTT, AMQP). Deciding on the deployment and communication platforms has made test deployment and integration work easier to manage.
2. Inception design (from the DoA) did not specify some components, e.g., for operational management or configuration. The architecture needed additional components to cover system configuration and monitoring.
3. Blockchain is still not a plug-and-play technology and requires a substantial amount of low-level configuration.
4. The Matchmaker should match agents (requester and suppliers). Moreover, the Matchmaker should match a request with the best available offer.
5. Use cases need to be solidly anchored in the real world of the actors and end users. They must not solely represent what is feasible from a technical point of view, but also reflect non-functional requirements such as regulations and business practices. Otherwise, the business cases would become unsustainable for further exploitation.
DIGICOR | Decentralised Agile Coordination Across Supply Chains
01-10-2016
-30-09-2019
Factory2Fit | Empowering and participatory adaptation of factory automation to fit for workers
01-10-2016
-30-09-2019
A use case derived from Continental’s measurement lab has been used for validation, revealing the importance of task properties careful choice, time to familiarize employees to such system and assuring sensitive data security.
Within Factory2Fit there were 2 use cases for the codesign process piloted at Continental plant Limbach-Oberfrohna. One pilot was carried out for the workplace design and one for the work process design. An evaluation of the method selection and execution showed that there was good acceptance among the workers who contributed to the design process. To reach positive results during the codesign process it is essential to assess the boundary conditions and the group structure very well.
The developed tool could be extended to become a part of a bigger communication platform, between the equipment provider and their customers, aiming at strengthening their relationship.
SoMeP was piloted at Prima Power, unveiling that the integration of production information and messaging is valuable and time-saving in getting guidance. Gamification can motivate workers to share knowledge (Zikos et al., 2019). The use of social media will require organizational policies e.g. in moderating the content (Aromaa et al., 2019).
Worker Feedback Dashboard was piloted in three factories with ten workers. For user acceptance, it has been crucial that the workers participated in planning how to use the solution, and what kind of work practices were related to its use. The pilot evaluation results indicate that there are potential lead users for the Worker Feedback Dashboard. Introducing the solution would facilitate showing the impacts and could then encourage those who may be more doubtful to join.
ARAG solution was piloted in a factory of United Technologies Corporation (UTC). The validation results reflected the potential of the solution, technicians’ acceptability to solutions specifically designed for supporting them in complex operations. Recent studies have shown that gamification tools can be utilized in industrial AR solutions for reducing technicians’ learning curve and increasing their cognition (Tsourma et al., 2019).
On-the-job learning tool was piloted in a UTC factory producing air handling units. What is learned, is that in order to display the content more understandable, users must be able to interact with it, by viewing the components CAD files and make or read remarks.
A4BLUE | Adaptive Automation in Assembly For BLUE collar workers satisfaction in Evolvable context
01-10-2016
-30-09-2019
The assembly collaborative robot considers both the operation being performed and operator’s anthropometric characteristics for control program selection and part positioning. Besides, the workplace includes multimodal interactions with both the dual arm assembly and logistic robots as well as with the Manufacturing Execution System. Verbal interaction includes natural speaking (i.e. Spanish language) and voice-based feedback messages, while nonverbal interaction is based on gesture commands considering both left and right-handed workers and multichannel notifications (e.g. push notifications, emails, etc.). Furthermore, the maintenance technician is assisted by on event Intervention request alerts, maintenance decision support dashboard and AR/VR based step by step on the job guidance.
The proposed solution comprises an adaptive smart tool and an AR instruction application using HoloLens wearable devices and a framework for ensuring digital continuity starting from the data recorded in the system for manufacturing engineering up to the execution and analysis phase
An AR based solution is proposed for instructions visualization enabling also on-job training activities and guidance. Regarding the ergonomics, an autonomous tool-trolley has been integrated including voice command and AR based gesture steering.
A collaborative robotic cell has been implemented for the deburring operation where the robot executes the most exhausting phases, while the worker focuses on final quality inspection. Regarding the assembly process, an AR solution, using ultra-real animations has been implemented to guide operators through tasks. Additional AR functionalities include the visualization of textual information (tips, best practices…), access to technical documents and voice recording
Trust is identified as a key indicator in the pilot. Trust experiments are critical when introducing automation mechanisms that co-operate with workers.
Workers’ opinion is key, especially for decision and acceptance, during the design and development of adaptive automation solutions.
Adaptation within automation mechanisms is reported to be an enhancement at the workplace, according to workers.
The introduction of the is perceived by workers as helpful, especially when productive tasks are exhausting and may provoke health issues. They are not received with reluctance but as supportive in workers’ tasks at the workplace. Regarding AR, it is generally considered as very useful, although the HMD (HoloLens) are too heavy for long time tasks.
Daedalus | Distributed control and simulAtion platform to support an Ecosystem of DigitAL aUtomation developerS
01-10-2016
-30-09-2019
AUTOWARE | Wireless Autonomous, Reliable and Resilient ProductIon Operation ARchitecture for Cognitive Manufacturing
01-10-2016
-30-09-2019
ConnectedFactories | Industrial scenarios for connected factories
01-09-2016
-30-11-2019
COROMA | Cognitively enhanced robot for flexible manufacturing of metal and composite parts
01-10-2016
-30-09-2019
The COROMA modular platform is an innovative approach that has developed seven fuctional modules to improve the performance of already existing robotic systems:
- CORO-OPTIP: this module equips the robot with process awareness to detect, for example, vibrations during drilling that will trigger a reaction, or check tool wear if a sanding operation is being carried out.
- CORO-MOB provides the robot with mobility, so it can move autonomously through the workshop.
- CORO-SAFE offers artificial vision so that the robots can detect the presence of humans and make way.
- CORO-COOP focuses on providing developments for a communication platform so that the robot can interact with other machines and robots.
- CORO-SENSE is a vision module implemented by means of camera systems and laser technology, so that it can understand the environment and find the part on which they must work.
- CORO-PROG minimum programming module allows the robot to respond to operator’s instructions, and to respond to visual instructions in a simple way.
- CORO-HAND allows the robot to pick up tools and provide the system with dexterity.
COROMA provides the flexibility that European metalworking and advanced material manufacturing companies require to compete in the rapidly evolving global market.
COROMA will have a positive impact on employment in the European industry, as:
- companies using this new robot concept will require new, different professional profiles.
- European market share in robot production could go down if great innovation efforts are not made in this field.
- the effective collaboration between humans and robots will alleviate the most arduous manual tasks entailing repetitive joint and muscular movements. The automation of these operations will help to create highly specialized jobs in European industry, and to avoid the relocation of jobs that would otherwise be manual in countries with a lower hourly rate.
In this way, the overall results of the project are:
- The creation of collaborative robot-machine environments
- A positive impact for robot manufacturers
- Boosting the implementation of robotics in component manufacturers
- Industry has a good disposition to integrate the techologies developed and applied in COROMA: we must continue approaching final applications of robots in manufacturing environment.
- Even though we've not reached TRL 9, it is clear from our industrial prototypes, that the results are good compared with those of manual operations.
- Even though the final system application substitutes manual operations, new high level tasks are created, so job loss is not a direct outcome from robotisation.
- In fact, high level Robotics and automation in European industry is a must in order to avoid manufacturing operations to migrate to low cost countries.
- There is a need of standards (safety/ risk assessment) for mobile robots in industrial environments.
ENCOMPASS | ENgineering COMPASS
01-10-2016
-29-02-2020
INCLUSIVE | Smart and adaptive interfaces for INCLUSIVE work environment
01-10-2016
-30-09-2019
The smart HMI was tested in E80, with expert and nonexpert operators working on an AGV in real working environment. The availability of such a tool to guide the use and maintenance of complex vehicles was strongly appreciated by workers, since it simplifies the interaction with the vehicle proprietary user interface and enable structured access to knowledge of specific procedures that have been carried out empirically. Moreover, expert operators are now able to take advantage of their experience and plan ad hoc maintenance plan, customized on the current status of the fleet.
Further studies are being carried out to employ the virtual training in order to train the customers’ operators without having to wait for the delivery of a newly bought machine, or without having to block a productive machine for training purposes. The ADAPT module will be further developed in order to evaluate integration with the recently released MAESTRO Active HMI, which already incorporates personalization features such as language settings. Finally, discussions are underway with the commercial area in order to verify whether the use of wearables by customer’s workers can be promoted in order to improve their well-being at home.
Even if robots are well known in Europe there is a lack of knowledge on their real potential and on the existence of tools able to simplify their programming and reconfiguration. Most Industries need to be supported in the process of introducing such tools in the plants. Advanced tools for training, are essential
FAR-EDGE | Factory Automation Edge Computing Operating System Reference Implementation
01-10-2016
-31-10-2019
FAR-EDGE demostrates the feasibility and business value of Edge Computing (EC) applied to manufacturing, using Distributing Ledger Technology (DLT) as the key enabler. DLT allows several autonomous local processes to cooperate as peers in the scope of the same global process, the required state synchronization and common business loging being implemented by Smart Contracts. This approach, if applied correctly, results in totally decentralized and fail-safe CPS that are still easily monitored, controlled and managed centrally.
Adoption of new and disruptive technology is not an easy task for SME, due to lack of budget and of internal skills. To mitigate this problem, FAR-EDGE defines speficic migration strategies that may help SMEs plan their Industry 4.0 journey, with the support of FAR-EDGE assets.
In FAR-EDGE, the value of DLT is in distributed consensus: enabling the intelligent edge nodes of a system to agree - or disagree - on state transitions, to the effect that any change in global state (e.g., the assignment of a task to a specific node) must be approved collectively; moreover, individual nodes may fail or go offline without compromising the system as a whole. However, standard DLT platforms also maintain an immutable log of transactions (the Blockchain) that is replicated on all nodes, which may represent a significant performance bottleneck in many real-world applications. What we learned from the FAR-EDGE experimentation is that, in most factory automation scenarios, the historical memory of any transaction may be cleared once consensus is safely reached on it - something that is not supported by any current DLT implementation. This form of short-lived state persistency is something that is probably worth experimenting with in the future.
HUMAN | HUman MANufacturing
01-10-2016
-30-09-2019
Evaluation studies carried out at the premises of Airbus showed positive results for both of the Exoskeleton and KIT services developed for this specific use case. Both physical and mental fatigue of workers were reduced, as an outcome of the Exoskeleton and KIT services respectively. Workers were keen enough to adopt the new technologies to their everyday working activities.
Both WOS and KIT services have been evaluated at COMAU in real life applications, showing that WOS has been well accepted by both operators and engineers as a valuable tool for eliminating motion waste and improve workplace ergonomics in production lines. The evaluation of KIT showed that the developed solution helps to reduce cognitive load of operators, reduce faults and improve efficiency.
KIT, Exoskeleton service and OAST have been evaluated at ROYO premises in real working conditions. KIT has been characterized as a valuable tool that reduces cognitive load and helps workers eliminate uncertainties at the assembly process. The combination of Exoskeleton service with OAST has helped to reduce the physical and mental stress of the operators at the palletization area of ROYO.
HINDCON | Hybrid INDustrial CONstruction through a 3D printing
15-09-2016
-14-09-2019
GO0D MAN | aGent Oriented Zero Defect Multi-stage mANufacturing
01-10-2016
-30-09-2019
HIPERLAM | High Performance Laser-based Additive Manufacturing
01-11-2016
-31-01-2020
NIMBLE | Collaboration Network for Industry, Manufacturing, Business and Logistics in Europe
01-10-2016
-31-03-2020