One of the most significant advances in the development of computer science, information and communication technologies is represented by the cyber-physical systems (CPS). They are systems of collaborating computational entities which are in intensive connection with the surrounding physical world and its on-going processes, providing and using, at the same time, data-accessing and data-processing services available on the Internet. Cyber-physical production systems (CPPS), relying on the latest, and the foreseeable further developments of computer science, information and communication technologies on one hand, and of manufacturing science and technology, on the other, may lead to the 4th industrial revolution, frequently noted as Industrie 4.0. The paper underlines that there are significant roots in general – and in particular to the CIRP community – which point towards CPPS. Expectations towards research in and implementation of CPS and CPPS are outlined and some case studies are introduced. Related new R&D challenges are highlighted.

Cyber-physical systems in manufacturing

Although the literature on university–industry links has begun to uncover the reasons for, and types of, collaboration between universities and businesses, it offers relatively little explanation of ways to reduce the barriers in these collaborations. This paper seeks to unpack the nature of the obstacles to collaborations between universities and industry, exploring influence of different mechanisms in lowering barriers related to the orientation of universities and to the transactions involved in working with university partners. Drawing on a large-scale survey and public records, this paper explores the effects of collaboration experience, breadth of interaction, and inter-organizational trust on lowering different types of barriers. The analysis shows that prior experience of collaborative research lowers orientation-related barriers and that greater levels of trust reduce both types of barriers studied. It also indicates that breadth of interaction diminishes the orientation-related, but increases transaction-related barriers. The paper explores the implications of these findings for policies aimed at facilitating university–industry collaboration.

Investigating the factors that diminish the barriers to university-industry collaboration

A great challenge facing industry today is managing variety throughout the entire products life cycle. Drivers of products variety, its benefits, pre-requisites and associated complexity and cost are presented. Enhancing consumers’ value through variety and approaches for achieving it efficiently including modularity, commonality and differentiation are discussed. Variant-oriented manufacturing systems paradigms, as enablers of product variety, and the effective co-development of variants and their manufacturing systems to ensure economic sustainability are reviewed. Industrial applications and guidelines to achieve economy of scope with advantages of economy of scale are discussed. Perspectives and insights on future research in this field are offered.

Product Variety Management

Survey paper: A survey on industrial applications of fuzzy control

Review of digital twin applications in manufacturing

https://www.sztaki.hu/~viharos/homepage/Publications/2011/2011_CIRP_ANNALS/2011_CIRP-Annals---Manufacturing-Technology_Viharos_Web.pdf

A system for the detailed scheduling of wind farm maintenance

The MTA SZTAKI Smart Factory: Platform for Research and Project-oriented Skill Development in Higher Education

Together with the trends of mass personalization, flexible robotic applications become more and more popular. Although conventional robotic automation of workpiece manipulation seems to be solved, advanced tasks still need great amount of effort to be reached. In most cases, on-site robot programming methods, which are intuitive and easy to use, are not applicable in flexible scenarios. On the other hand, the application of offline programming methods requires careful modeling and planning. Consequently, this paper proposes a generalized development methodology for flexible robotic pick-and-place workcells, in order to provide guidance and thus facilitate the development process. The methodology is based on the Digital Twin (DT) concept, which allows the iterative refinement of the workcell both in the digital and in the physical space. The goal is to speed up the overall commissioning (or reconfiguration) process and reduce the amount of work in the physical workcell. This can be achieved by digitizing and automating the development, and maintaining sufficient twin closeness. With that, the operation of the digital model can be accurately realized in the physical workcell. The methodology is presented through a semi-structured pick-and-place task, realized in an experimental robotic workcell together with a reconfiguration scenario.

Generic development methodology for flexible robotic pick-and-place workcells based on Digital Twin

This article presents a new algorithm for simultaneous 5-axis spline interpolation The algorithm basically merges two concepts: (1) the interpolation of the toolpath with Pythagorean Hodograph (PH) curves and (2) the analytic solution of the inverse kinematic problem using the template equation method The first method allows one to obtain a analytic relation between the arclength and the parameter of the toolpath curve This one enables one to control the velocity of the tool on the workpiece The second method allows one to determine the analytic solution of the parameterized inverse kinematic problem that permits us to introduce arbitrary number of geometric parameters A natural selection of the possible parameters can be the parameters of tool geometry and the workpiece placement This way, the off-line generated inverse solutions—that transform the cutter contact curve into axis values—can be online compensated, as soon as the exact parameter values are become known Based on these two approaches, a robust and fast method for the simultaneous 5-axis spline interpolation is developed The result of this new algorithm is time-dependent axis splines which represent the given toolpath with high accuracy

High accuracy spline interpolation for 5-axis machining

In workshops of CNC machines, jobs may have alternative sequences of operations, where each operation must be performed on one of a pre-specified subset of machines. The key to solving to this extremely hard scheduling problem is balancing the load on machines of a flexible job shop. The proposed method combines mathematical programming for selecting the best routing alternatives and tabu search for finding the best assignment of machines to operations along with the routings. Experiments in an industrial case study refer to the primary role of optimized load balancing that proved to be computationally tractable on large-scale problem instances.

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Gábor Erdős

Papers

A system for the detailed scheduling of wind farm maintenance

The MTA SZTAKI Smart Factory: Platform for Research and Project-oriented Skill Development in Higher Education

Generic development methodology for flexible robotic pick-and-place workcells based on Digital Twin

High accuracy spline interpolation for 5-axis machining

Scheduling with alternative routings in CNC workshops