Software Architectures for Human-Robot Collaborations in Industry 4.X
Type
fundamental research project
Start Date
01 March 2024
End Date
31 May 2024
Status
Ongoing
Description
The idea of this Geen Box project is to extend the existing smart manufacturing laboratory setup at the Software Systems Programming and Development group with a human workstation and three robots to simulate more realistic production lines and environments that include machine-robot, robot-robot, and human-robot collaborations. The focus of this project is on the acquisition and integration of various sensors and three robots-a Dobot Magician robotic arm supplemented with a conveyor belt, and two mobile TurtleBot robots for carrying out transport activities in the lab room.

Due to their autonomous navigation capabilities, including obstacle avoidance, provided by ROS (Robot Operating System), the TurtleBot robots are perfectly suited to simulate an extended smart supply chain for our existing smart factory that includes the automated delivery of new raw materials for production from external suppliers and the pickup of the manufactured products for further processing. The robotic arm acts as an interface between the existing smart factory setup, the mobile robots, and human co-workers. Supplemented with a conveyor belt, we can setup a dedicated human workstation for self-adaptive human-robot collaboration using the robotic arm as part of the manufacturing process. Various additional sensors deployed at the human workstation allow us to monitor the human movements and automatically adjust the robot's behavior accordingly to ensure the human's safety-transforming even the simple robotic arm into a cobot. This extended production line will allow us to simulate future production scenarios with sophisticated means for autonomy, flexibility, and customization as demanded by Industry 4.0. With the enabling of human-robot collaborations, we are also able to investigate more groundbreaking scenarios in the context of Industry5.0 where Human-in-the-loop, Sustainability, and Resilience of manufacturing and supply chains are the major goals.
Leader contributor(s)
Funder(s)
Topic(s)
Software Architecture
Cyber-phyiscal Systems
Human-Robot Collaborations
Industry 4.x
Method(s)
Engineering
Proof-of-Concept Prototype
Design Sciene Research
Division(s)

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  • Publication
    Sustainability in and through IoT-enhanced Business Processes
    (ceur-ws.org, 2024-09)
    Albert, Manoli
    ;
    Antoni Mestre Gascon
    ;
    Ronny Seiger orcid-logo
    ;
    Torres, Victoria
    ;
    Valderas, Pedro
    In today's interconnected world, businesses integrate Internet of Things (IoT) devices to enhance efficiency, gather real-time data, and make informed decisions. These devices autonomously execute tasks and collect data, revolutionizing business processes (IoT-enhanced BPs). They optimize operations, improve productivity, and streamline resource utilization across various industries, such as manufacturing, retail, and logistics. However, businesses must also focus on sustainability beyond environmental concerns, encompassing economic, social, human, and technical aspects. Measuring the sustainability of IoT-enhanced BPs across these dimensions is crucial for long-term viability. While sustainability in business processes has been integrated over the past two decades, existing research has not sufficiently considered the role that IoT devices play in this context. To this end, this work aims to analyze the impact of IoT devices on sustainability issues, emphasizing the need for ongoing research in the BPM field to achieve sustainable IoT-enhanced BPs.
    Type: working paper
    Journal: BPM 2024 Best Dissertation Award, Doctoral Consortium, and Demonstration & Resources Forum
    URL: https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3758/paper-28.pdf
    URI: https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/handle/20.500.14171/120781
  • Publication
    Revision of a Smart Factory Software Architecture from Monolith to Microservices
    ( 2024-09)
    Ronny Seiger orcid-logo
    ;
    Malburg, Lukas
    Software architecture plays an important role in the development of modern, complex software systems as it influences a system's quality attributes and ability to grow with future demand. Designing the software architecture of cyber-physical systems (CPS) becomes even more challenging due to their capability of directly influencing the physical world and thus introducing new non-functional requirements related to fault-tolerance, safety, and resource scarcity. Existing research focuses on systems engineering to achieve the vertical integration of CPS with an organization's information systems and processes, but not on software architecture to horizontally extend existing systems with new CPS. In this report we describe the process of revising an existing monolithic software architecture for a smart factory towards a microservices-based architecture to meet these new requirements and prepare the factory to be extended with new CPS. For the revision of the existing architecture, we provide an analysis of its code base before and after changes, a description of the refactoring process, and discuss relevant new nonfunctional requirements and architecture options. We elaborate on the architectural decisions favoring microservices and analyze the new architecture regarding improved quality attributes to evaluate the system.
    Type: conference paper
    Journal: International Conference on Enterprise Design, Operations, and Computing (EDOC) Forum
    URL: https://conferences.big.tuwien.ac.at/biweek2024/pdfs/biweek2024_paper_100.pdf
    URI: https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/handle/20.500.14171/120782