Smart automated guided vehicles for manufacturing in the context of Industry 4.0

The logistics market has been impacted by increase of e-commerce, mass customization, omni-channel distribution, and just-in-time philosophy. In order to attend to this dynamic change, automation has been applied in warehouses. Although, some researches point out the lack of flexibility as a bottleneck. Therefore, a comprehensive literature review of recent papers is vital to draw a framework of the past and to shed light on future directions. This paper aims to review published papers in the last ten years related to flexible automation in warehouses and to construct a framework that could guide future researchers in the construction of an innovative conceptual model that may be applied at warehouses in the future. A total of 113 papers published between January 2008 and December 2018 have been selected, reviewed, and categorized to construct a useful foundation of past research. Results showed the key point to achieve a flexible automated warehouse is the combination of automated equipment, data collection technologies, and management solutions. Finally, based on the reviewed papers, an innovative framework of a flexible automated warehouse is proposed.

Flexible automated warehouse: a literature review and an innovative framework

This paper contributes to a taxonomy of augmented reality and robotics based on a survey of 460 research papers. Augmented and mixed reality (AR/MR) have emerged as a new way to enhance human-robot interaction (HRI) and robotic interfaces (e.g., actuated and shape-changing interfaces). Recently, an increasing number of studies in HCI, HRI, and robotics have demonstrated how AR enables better interactions between people and robots. However, often research remains focused on individual explorations and key design strategies, and research questions are rarely analyzed systematically. In this paper, we synthesize and categorize this research field in the following dimensions: 1) approaches to augmenting reality; 2) characteristics of robots; 3) purposes and benefits; 4) classification of presented information; 5) design components and strategies for visual augmentation; 6) interaction techniques and modalities; 7) application domains; and 8) evaluation strategies. We formulate key challenges and opportunities to guide and inform future research in AR and robotics.

Augmented Reality and Robotics: A Survey and Taxonomy for AR-enhanced Human-Robot Interaction and Robotic Interfaces

The industrial robots in factories have been recently designed and utilized to handle dangerous tasks for humans, to achieve faster and more accurate production processes, and to reduce the cost of the products. Since the competitiveness in today’s business environment increases, manufacturers require more intelligent systems making smarter decisions. In the light of Industry 4.0 revolution, the advances in information technology like artificial intelligence, cloud and Big Data change the use and design of robots in the industry. The potential industrial robotic applications and the next generation of robotics planned to be utilized in the Industry 4.0 factories are discussed.

Advances in Robotics in the Era of Industry 4.0

The changes of market, the shift of manufacturing paradigm, the evolution of devices, and the emergence of new technologies, require and drive manufacturing to be flexible, reconfigurable, adaptable, and efficient, whereas a manufacturing system becomes huge and complex. In order to overcome such challenges, self-organizing distributed manufacturing is imperative. For this need, first state of the art of self-organizing systems in manufacturing is surveyed. Then the approaches and mechanisms of self-organizing manufacturing systems are analyzed. Finally, based on the advances in ICT technologies such as big data, cyber-physical system, and proactive computing, a prospect of self-organizing manufacturing for Industry 4.0 is addressed.

Self-Organizing Manufacturing: Current Status and Prospect for Industry 4.0

This paper presents a (ROS-based) framework for the development and assessment of (decentralized) multi-robot coordination strategies for Cyber-Physical Production Systems (CPPS) taking into account practical issues like network delays, localization inaccuracies, and availability of embedded computational power. It constitutes the base for (a) investigating the beneficial level of (de-) centrality within Automated Guided Vehicle-based CPPS, and (b) finding adequate concepts for navigation and collision handling by means of behavior-, negotiationand rule-based strategies for resolving or proactively avoiding multi-robot path planning conflicts. Applying these concepts in industrial production is assumed to increase flexibility and fault-tolerance, e. g., with respect to machine failures or delivery delays at the shopfloor level.

Towards Autonomously Navigating and Cooperating Vehicles in Cyber-Physical Production Systems

Nowadays, production systems and warehouses still lack human-robot collaboration. Often due to safety issues robots are kept behind safety fences and the overall system is shutdown once a human enters. This paper is based on a new concept to overcome these issues. It consists of a safety concept which ensures a more efficient human-robot collaboration. The human worker can be localized via a safety vest which he/she wears and the nearby robots are also aware of this information. We propose a more efficient and safe overall system by using an Augmented Reality device which offers a simple interface between humans and robots and a Heterogeneous Fleet Management System which plans and provides collision-free paths for humans and robots and ensures that the resulting environment is safe for both robots and humans.

Safe Human-Robot-Interaction in Highly Flexible Warehouses using Augmented Reality and Heterogenous Fleet Management System

In recent years, various abstract and practical architectures have been proposed in the context of Industry 4.0. While these architectures focus on different aspects, their common goal is to facilitate the transformation of a static production into a flexible, resilient, interconnected cyber-physical production system (CPPS). However, reviewing those reveals that a general procedure for applying those architectures is missing. In this paper, we propose a modular, scalable and lightweight architecture utilizing simplified semantic information models. We also present an integration guide that helps factory owners and process engineers to apply the proposed architecture. Furthermore, we also show how the factory operators can make architectural decisions according to their needs. This approach will help speed up the application of the architecture for the realization of a modular and scalable CPPS.

SWAP-IT: A Scalable and Lightweight Industry 4.0 Architecture for Cyber-Physical Production Systems

In this paper we present a holistic concept of an automated topology creation and a decentralized global path planning approach for large robot fleets with the focus on logistic applications. Based on a map or a CAD file and the robot size an algorithm for calculating a roadmap graph with intermediate points will be presented. The algorithm is able to utilize as much of the available space as possible and can also guarantee that neither edges nor vertices overlap each other which may lead to collisions of the robots. To give an indicator of how performant the roadmap generation could be, an analysis of different topologies using several graph attributes is presented. Based on the created roadmap graph, a flexible and scalable decentralized routing concept is presented. For a better suitability in a logistics context, a time-based routing approach was chosen.

Dennis Lunsch

Papers

Towards Autonomously Navigating and Cooperating Vehicles in Cyber-Physical Production Systems

Safe Human-Robot-Interaction in Highly Flexible Warehouses using Augmented Reality and Heterogenous Fleet Management System

SWAP-IT: A Scalable and Lightweight Industry 4.0 Architecture for Cyber-Physical Production Systems

Automated topology creation for global path planning of large AGV fleets