AWARENESS AS AN IMPORTANT COMPONENT OF THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE FACTORIES OF THE FUTURE

The article defines the Factory of the Future as a modern organizational concept of production and as a new type of industrial architecture. The concept of awareness as an important property of the architectural environment of the newest production facilities is disclosed. The main methods of its formation are listed and described. Examples of manufacturing facilities implementing awareness in its architecture are given. The conclusions about the positive impact of the awareness on the functioning of high-tech production facilities and Factories of the Future are made.

Collaborative Robot Risk of Passage Among Dynamic Obstacles

Industry 4.0 projects ubiquitous collaborative robots in smart factories of the future, particularly in assembly and material handling. To ensure efficient and safe human-robot collaborative interactions, this paper presents a novel algorithm for estimating Risk of Passage (ROP) a robot incurs by passing between dynamic obstacles (humans, moving equipment, etc.). This paper posits that robot trajectory durations will be shorter and safer if the robot can react proactively to predicted collision between a robot and human worker before it occurs, compared to reacting when it is imminent. I.e., if the risk that obstacles may prohibit robot passage at a future time in the robot’s trajectory is greater than a user defined risk limit, then an Obstacle Pair Volume (OPV), encompassing the obstacles at that time, is added to the planning scene. Results found from simulation show that an ROP algorithm can be trained in ∼120 workcell cycles. Further, it is demonstrated that when a trained ROP algorithm introduces an OPV, trajectory durations are shorter compared to those avoiding obstacles without the introduction of an OPV. The use of ROP estimation with addition of OPV allows workcells to operate proactively smoother with shorter cycle times in the presence of unforeseen obstacles.

Future Industrial Networks in Process Automation: Goals, Challenges, and Future Directions

There are many initiatives and technologies working towards implementing factories of the future. One consensus is that the classical hierarchical automation system design needs to be flattened while supporting the functionality of both Operation Technology (OT) and Information Technology (IT) within the same network infrastructure. To achieve the goal of IT/OT convergence in process automation, an evolutionary transition is preferred. Challenges are foreseen during the transition, mainly caused by the traditional automation architecture, and the main challenge is to identify the gap between the current and future network architectures. To address the challenges, in this paper, we describe one desired future scenario for process automation and carry out traffic measurements from a pulp and paper mill. The measured traffic is further analyzed, which reveals representative traffic characteristics in the process automation. Finally, the key challenges and future directions towards a system architecture for factories of the future are presented.

Towards Sustainable Factories

Sustainability is becoming a major objective of factories worldwide in an effort to eliminate or reduce the use of toxic materials and greenhouse emissions, extend the life of products, reuse waste, and conserve energy, not only for meeting the needs of consumers, but also the multi-stakeholders from both within and beyond the supply chain. The increasing global demand for scarce natural resources is posing a great challenge for producing companies. In recent years, the advent of new technologies and the changes in demography and working conditions as well as the desire for individualized products has added greater complexity to manufacturing. In this context, this chapter provides an overview of the main issues affecting the industrial sector on the way ahead towards sustainability, including contemporary trends triggering the requirements for factories of the future as well as the main research and innovation lines necessary to answer such requirements.