Elsevier

CIRP Annals

Volume 66, Issue 2, 2017, Pages 707-730
CIRP Annals

Innovative control of assembly systems and lines

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cirp.2017.05.010Get rights and content

Abstract

The increasing demand for flexibility and reconfigurability of assembly lines generates new challenges for the control of these lines and their subsystems, such as robots, grippers, conveyors or automated guided vehicles. Also new requirements for their interaction between each other and the environment as well as with humans arise. On the other hand the rapid change of information and communication technology opens new potentials for innovative control. Due to the high degree of interconnection between controllers, actuators and sensors, the classical automation pyramid is replaced by networked structures with a higher degree of flexibility, but also higher complexity. This trend is supported by the ability to collect and process data within cloud environments, the rapid increase of computational power of decentralized and embedded controllers and the high potential of machine learning for automation. This keynote gives an overview of innovative approaches in ICT and robotics for flexible control and automation of assembly lines and systems.

Introduction

Current production systems are facing an increasing demand for highly customized products. At the same time the market competition leads to the requirement of cost efficiency. These two goals of both customized and economic production need to be addressed for a successful future of the manufacturing industry. Not only the manufacturing companies themselves but also the equipment suppliers, IT suppliers and suppliers of software in this field are affected by these future requirements.

Assembly systems for customized and economic production are facing increasing demands for flexibility and reconfigurability, reusability and changeability [15], [16], [79], [203], [204]. In order to meet these requirements, there are various challenges and changes that must be addressed for assembly systems. Major influences are

  • increasing complexity of automated assembly systems,

  • planning and integration of assembly systems and lines within the Digital Factory,

  • integration of flexible and intelligent robotics in assembly,

  • demand for flexible human–robot interaction,

  • integration of complex sensor systems such as imaging sensors for in-line inspection and control and

  • need for adaptive control and automation solutions.

All these points define a close relation between assembly equipment and industrial IT-systems, for which a development push can be observed due to the various developments in the field of Industry 4.0, such as Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) or cloud technology.

Control technology for assembly lines and systems is a field where the influence of changes in information and communication technology (ICT) represents a huge potential for flexibility and reconfigurability. This will lead to

  • use of flexible and autonomous machines and devices (flexible grippers, cooperating robots etc.) managing a high variety of parts,

  • modular control software, capable of being integrated into a variety of shop floor control systems,

  • intelligent control systems utilising information from sensors, exhibiting automatic decision making and monitoring functionality and

  • open communication architecture, allowing the transparent integration of new manufacturing components and their automatic operation.

Major influences from ICT for control of assembly lines and systems can be foreseen due to the following influences

  • rapid change of former control and communication structures originally based on “automation pyramid” design (ISO TC 184/1988; ISO 16484-2/2004),

  • growing importance of event based control strategies and systems based on IEC 61499 in order to reduce complexity,

  • diffusion of Ethernet-based fieldbus structures such as EtherCAT [45] and IP-based networks,

  • developments in wireless communication systems such as 5G and Tactile Internet,

  • developments in the context of Industry 4.0 (cyber-physical systems, cloud technology, digital shadow) [114],

  • development of innovative Computer Aided Control Systems Design (CACSD) tools including structured design and testing solutions based on both, simulation based and formal verification methods,

  • diffusion of software standards for industrial communication interfaces such as OPC-UA or MQTT [123],

  • Open Source controller environments and libraries such as the Robot Operating System [139],

  • standards in automation planning environments such as AutomationML [4] and

  • the integration of artificial intelligence into industrial robotics.

This leads to the hypothesis that changing production environment and requirements in combination with rapid developments in the field of information and communication technology as well as innovative robotics, actuator, sensor and control systems and digital factory solutions change the way assembly systems will be developed, integrated, controlled and reconfigured during their life cycle. The goal of this keynote is to reveal the opportunities from developments in ICT and robotics for the challenges and requirements of future assembly (Fig. 1).

Section snippets

Control and ICT structures for assembly

Computer control of manufacturing systems has been the focus of extensive research over the last decades. Advances in microprocessor, computing, networking and interfacing technologies have improved capabilities of industrial automation and control systems substantially over this period. However, these control systems are proprietary and still have problems in areas such as interoperability, scalability, and lack of standard user interfaces. The state of the art in control architectures and

Virtualized and service oriented control structures

Today, control technology for assembly systems is based on specialized hardware platforms, such as Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC) and robot controllers (RC). These platforms fulfill the realtime requirements of synchronized processes, however they suffer from limited scalability and interconnectivity. The virtualization of control platforms overcomes the dependency of control functionality from specialized hardware platforms and their interfaces and therefore allows for the implementation

Recent developments in robotics supporting flexible assembly system integration

While the previous chapter addressed technologies, which provide a higher degree of flexibility of control systems and platforms, the following sections cope with concepts for flexible automated configuration, integration and sensor based adaptation of assembly system components as well as the flexible integration with humans.

Flexibility and transformability in assembly

The innovative control structures and robotic platforms as well as their sensor based adaptation described in the previous chapters allow to significantly change the designs for assembly systems. The following sections address new designs principles for assembly lines and workplaces with effects on flexibility and transformability.

Economic potential for assembly systems and related ICT

In the recent years a steady growth of the market for assembly systems can be observed. In Germany the growth rate varies between 5% to 10% [177]. For systems with a high degree of automation in assembly enabled by robots and vision systems, the growth rates are even higher. According to the analysis of the International Federation of Robotics [70] the worldwide estimated operational stock of industrial robots will rise from 1.8 million systems in 2016 to almost 2.6 million in 2019. The main

Summary

The rapid change of information and communication technology (ICT) had a tremendous impact to automation technology since the first microprocessor based control systems for machines and robots were developed in the last century. According to Moore’s Law, the computation power of microprocessor platforms doubled almost every two years and the same performance increase could be observed for data storage system as well as the bandwidth of communication systems. Since 2011 mulit-core processors

Outlook

The increasing demand for flexibility in assembly will raise the pressure for the development of innovative automation solutions. These automation solutions will have to map cognitive abilities of the human, as these are the basis for flexible reaction to variable environments and conditions in assembly.

Major cognitive abilities in this context are the vision and the tactile/haptic senses of the human in combination with the ability for implicit learning in the process. Impressive progress has

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank all the contributors for having sent material: H. Bley, H. ElMaraghi, G. Eßer, M. Helu, G. Lanza, D. Mourtzis, A. Lechler, D. Papakostas, O. Sauer, J. Schlechtendahl. R. Stark, F. Vincentini.

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