Digital thread approach for smart-collaborative robotic cell

Copyright © 2021 by ASME.Smart Manufacturing advances have recently emerged, focused on the integration of Digital Thread (DTh) and Digital Twin (DT). DTh-DT has been explored in additive manufacturing, aircraft production, and weapons. However, there is still an area of opportunity to explore DTh-DT in collaborative manufacturing cells, layouts, and specifically, in the creation of a system to make an intelligent robotic cell. This work provides a novel approach of a DTh-DT developed to function within a manufacturing robotic cell. A discrete event simulation (DES) was created with open-source programming software, representing the cell. Information is collected from the physical process and sent to a cloud service. The DES request the data from the cloud is executed and the results are received by a database, which works with a Server (Ignition 8.0). The Server receives data and displays results, working as the link between the DT and the Product Lifecycle. This work presents a quick look at a DTh applied to a robotic cell, an approach to a DT, and the use of different types of communications and platforms. The potential benefits of applying this type of configuration in an Industry 4.0 environment are described and critically reviewed.

Digital thread approach for smart-collaborative robotic cell Academic Article in Scopus