Highly dynamic and adaptive production

Phuket enables highly dynamic and adaptive production by using a multi-agent system to control the production processes. An individual model truck is manufactured as an example product. The production plan is adapted flexibly in the context of the available components. "The modules of the Production Island_Phuket are flexibly interchangeable, allowing skills to change and different products to be manufactured," explains Pascal Rübel, Factory-X project manager at SF. "A storage module, an automated assembly module, a transport module, a bin-picking module and a collaborative assembly module are docked at Automatica."

Part of the collaborative assembly module is a manual workstation to ensure a high degree of flexibility. The production method is dynamically adapted using an intelligent decision model. Depending on the production accuracy of the 3D print, a decision is made as to whether the truck's seams also need to be soldered. This task is performed by a tool changer, which enables automatic swapping between the soldering iron and gripper. The integrated safety concept enables a cobot or industrial mode. The automatically generated worker assistance for the assembly process is derived from the information in the Asset Administration Shell (AAS). The complexity of the assistance is based on the worker's qualifications. The robot can be controlled via gesture recognition, which enables direct interaction. In the future, voice commands, hand and gaze behavior analysis and gesture recognition will also be implemented to take interaction to a new level.

The bin-picking module works with two camera systems. The laser scanner is used to calculate the gripping points (point cloud) and the RGB depth camera is used for AI-based recognition of the objects in the bin. The information from both systems is merged to develop a gripping strategy. "The skill-based system works on the basis of AAS and OPC UA and is therefore manufacturer-independent," explains Rübel.

The automated assembly module demonstrates interoperability by synchronizing a Yaskawa robot and a Bosch Rexroth axis. The controller is decoupled from the hardware and containerized as a virtual PLC (app). This architecture offers scalable orchestration and resource utilization so that any software projects can be executed on the same hardware as the PLC, regardless of the programming language. Real-time synchronization is enabled by app-to-app communication on the shared memory area.

SF at Automatica: Hall B6, Stand 502 (co-exhibitor with Yaskawa)