Around €1 billion of EU funding was made available through Horizon 2020 for efforts in research and development under the Digitising European Industry (DEI) focus area, in sectors such as energy, mobility, construction and manufacturing. The production process today increasingly uses digital innovations such as artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing and big data analysis. By integrating these new solutions, factories can develop their processes digitally, boosting creativity and reducing the time spent from design to production.
Launched in November 2017 and receiving around €1.5 million of EU funding, the FASTEN project – Flexible & AutonomouS manufacTuring systEms for custom-desigNed products – developed, validated and disseminated an integrated and modular framework to increase quality and efficiency in aeronautics productions as well as facilitate maintenance services. FASTEN is framed within the Horizon 2020 EUB-02-2017 Call on the topic of “IoT Pilots: Smart manufacturing customisation” to foster cooperation between Europe and Brazil. FASTEN demonstrated their open and standardised IoT middleware to be applied to the shop floor, capable of running simulations, automate logistics and delivering fast and low-cost repair services. This was achieved by pairing digitally integrated services to manufacturing operations, using tools to decentralise data interchange and the decision-making process. The demonstration of the technologies have been performed in two pilot cases: one hosted by ThyssenKrupp in Brazil and the other hosted by Embraer in Portugal.
One example of results coming from FASTEN’s project lifecycle is its consultancy services for provisioning of sensor data in industrial IoT to allowing rapid identification of anomalies in the environment. The open IoT middleware architecture allows additional sensor provision, real-time data visualisation and management in the shop floor, which enables real-time sensor streaming and processing across the decision chain and seamless coordination for decision-making. The project created a user-friendly sensor ranking model that leads to a list of appropriate sensors through queries based on user requirements. The motivation behind creating a sensor ranking mechanism was due to the huge amount and variety of hardware and software elements involved, generating a large volume of data processed in a restricted time and allowing for the rapid identification of anomalies in the factory environment.
Another one of the project’s noteworthy results is a tool that increases the autonomy of Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) by following a predictive visual path. The digital solution uses visual sensors and can be used in industrial warehouses, where AGVs are guided around the facility following a guiding tape. This increases the ability to navigate even with surface, camera and mobile robot imperfections, improving the levels of inherent robustness.
The digital solutions developed in the project allow manufacturing companies with production sites both in Europe and Brazil to embrace upcoming opportunities in the fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0). With support from EU funding, factories of the future will be able to focus on digitising their processes, boosting new production technologies, and better managing energy and materials, allowing them not only to work faster, but smarter as well.