An improved cell controller for the aerospace manufacturing

The aerospace manufacturing industry is unique in that production typically focuses on high variety and quality but low volume. Existing flexible manufacturing cells are limited to certain types of machines, robots and cells which makes it difficult to introduce any changes. In this paper idea of treating machines, robots, any hardware and software as resource has been introduced. It describes the development of the Flexa Cell Coordinator (FCC), a system that is providing a solution to manage cells and their resources in a new flexible manner. It can control, organise and coordinate between cells and resources and is capable of controlling remote cells because of its distributed nature. It also provides connectivity with company systems e.g., Enterprise Resource Planner (ERP). It is extendable and capable of adding multiple cells inside the system. In FCC resources (e.g., tracker) can also be shared between cells. The paper presents its development and results of initial successful testing

Software system integration - Middleware - an overview

The integration of different softwares written in different language and based on different platforms can be tricky. In that situation a middleware is necessary to enable the communication between different softwares. The middleware enables the software system not only to share data but also share the services. This paper gives an overview of some of middleware technologies which can be used to integrate different software systems

Networked control system – an overview

Networked Control System (NCS) is fetching researchers’ interest from many decades. It’s been used in industry which range from manufacturing, automobile, aviation, aerospace to military. This paper gives the general architecture of NCS and its fundamental routes. It also touches to its advantages and disadvantages and some of the popular controller which include PID (Proportional-Integral-Derivative) and MPC (Model Predictive Control)

Enhanced cell controller for aerospace manufacturing

Aerospace manufacturing industry is unique in that production typically focuses on high variety and quality but extremely low volume. Manufacturing processes are also sometimes unique and not repeatable and, hence, costly. Production is getting more expensive with the introduction of industrial robots and their cells. This paper describes the development of the Flexa Cell Coordinator (FCC), a system that is providing a solution to manage resources at assembly cell level. It can control, organise and coordinate between the resources and is capable of controlling remote cells and resources because of its distributed nature. It also gives insight of a system to the higher management via its rich reporting facility and connectivity with company systems e.g., Enterprise Resource Planner (ERP). It is able to control various kinds of cells and resources (network based) which are not limited to robots and machines. It is extendable and capable of adding multiple numbers of cells inside the system. It also provides the facility of scheduling the task to avoid the deadlocking in the process. In FCC resources (e.g., tracker) can also be shared between cells

Contactless medium scale industrial robot collaboration

The growing cost of High-Value/Mix and Low Volume (HMLV) industries like Aerospace is heavily based on industrial robots and manual operations done by operators [1]. Robots are excellent in repeatability by HMLV industries need changes with every single product. On the other hand human workforce is good at variability and intelligence but cost a lot as production rate is not comparable to robots and machines. There are flexible systems which have been specifically introduced for this type of industry FLEXA is one of them. But still there is need of collaboration between human and robot to get the flexible and cost effective solution [2]. A comprehensive survey has been conducted specifically on the issue of Human Robot collaboration [3] which laid out many advantages of this approach includes flexibility, cost-effectiveness and use of robot as intelligent assistant. There are several attempts have been made for Human Robot Collaboration for HMLV industry and Chen et al. attempt is one of them

Kinematics analysis of 6-DoF articulated robot with spherical wrist

The aim of the paper is to study the kinematics of the manipulator. The articulated robot with a spherical wrist has been used for this purpose. The Comau NM45 Manipulator has been chosen for the kinematic model study. The manipulator contains six revolution joints. Pieper’s approach has been employed to study the kinematics (inverse) of the robot manipulator. Using this approach, the inverse kinematic problem is divided into two small less complex problems. This reduces the time of analysing the manipulator kinematically. The forward and inverse kinematics has been performed, and mathematical solutions are detailed based on D-H (Denavit–Hartenberg) parameters. The kinematics solution has been verified by solving the manipulator’s motion. It has been observed that the model is accurate as the motion trajectory was smoothly followed by the manipulator

A Study on Centralised and Decentralised Swarm Robotics Architecture for Part Delivery System

Drones are also known as UAVs are originally designed for military purposes. With the technological advances, they can be seen in most of the aspects of life from filming to logistics. The increased use of drones made it sometimes essential to form a collaboration between them to perform the task efficiently in a defined process. This paper investigates the use of a combined centralised and decentralised architecture for the collaborative operation of drones in a parts delivery scenario to enable and expedite the operation of the factories of the future. The centralised and decentralised approaches were extensively researched, with experimentation being undertaken to determine the appropriateness of each approach for this use-case. Decentralised control was utilised to remove the need for excessive communication during the operation of the drones, resulting in smoother operations. Initial results suggested that the decentralised approach is more appropriate for this use-case. The individual functionalities necessary for the implementation of a decentralised architecture were proven and assessed, determining that a combination of multiple individual functionalities, namely VSLAM, dynamic collision avoidance and object tracking, would give an appropriate solution for use in an industrial setting. A final architecture for the parts delivery system was proposed for future work, using a combined centralised and decentralised approach to combat the limitations inherent in each architecture

Exploring deepfake technology: creation, consequences and countermeasures

This paper presents a comprehensive examination of deepfakes, exploring their creation, production and identification. Deepfakes are videos, images or audio that are remarkably realistic and generated using artificial intelligence algorithms. While they were initially intended for entertainment and commercial use, their harmful social consequences have become more evident over time. These technologies are now being misapplied for the creation of explicit content, coercing individuals and disseminating false information, resulting in an erosion of and potentially negative societal consequences. The paper also highlights the significance of legal regulations in controlling the utilization of deepfakes and investigates methods for their identification through machine learning. In the modern digital world, comprehending the ethical and legal implications of deepfakes necessitates a thorough understanding of the phenomenon.Human-Intelligent Systems Integratio

Realtime calibration of an industrial robot

In large scale, complex and low volume manufacturing systems, robotics are now considered unavoidable for automating the factory operations. The aerospace industry focuses on a high variety and quality but extremely low volume. The precision it requires for numerous tasks is unique and distinct from any other manufacturing industry. This can comprise accurate position, module assembly, inspection, fastening, etc. The scale of the robot invites different types of errors during operation, which can be either because of the kinematics of the robot or because of the environment (noise, temperature, load, etc.). There are packages available from robot manufacturers for the correction and compensation of errors on the robot to achieve accuracy. There are two associated problems: 1. cost and 2. static nature. They are very costly and they do not provide correction in realtime fashion (dynamic); the robot stops, waits for the correction, and then moves to the next position. The external tool to monitor the accuracy also requires attaching with the robot permanently. These are dedicated resources. These tools for accurate measurement are expensive and attached permanently to a robot, which means wastage of resources. These measuring tools are called metrology devices and attaching these devices and the robot to the network means that other robots/machines can also use these expensive tools for measurement. Our aim was to address two problems in this project: 1. calibration (error correction and compensation of robot) and 2. dynamic and realtime processing. It helped to perform the dynamic error correction and the compensation of an industrial robot. The results showed the error correction was achieved in the region of 0.02 mm

A framework for controlling multiple industrial robots using mobile applications

Purpose: Over the last few decades, the development of the hardware and software has enabled the application of advanced systems. In the robotics field, the UI design is an intriguing area to be explored due to the creation of devices with a wide range of functionalities in a reduced size. Moreover, the idea of using the same UI to control several systems arouses a great interest considering that this involves less learning effort and time for the users. Therefore, this paper will present a mobile application to control two industrial robots with four modes of operation. Design/methodology/approach: The smartphone was selected to be the interface due to its wide range of capabilities and the MIT Inventor App was used to create the application, whose environment is supported by Android smartphones. For the validation, ROS was used since it is a fundamental framework utilised in industrial robotics and the Arduino Uno was used to establish the data transmission between the smartphone and the board NVIDIA Jetson TX2. In MIT Inventor App, the graphical interface was created to visualize the options available in the app whereas two scripts in python were programmed to perform the simulations in ROS and carry out the tests. Findings: The results indicated that the use of the sliders to control the robots is more favourable than the Orientation Sensor due to the sensibility of the sensor and human limitations to hold the smartphone perfectly still. Another important finding was the limitations of the autonomous mode, in which the robot grabs an object. In this case, the configuration of the Kinect camera and the controllers has a significant impact on the success of the simulation. Finally, it was observed that the delay was appropriate despite the use of the Arduino UNO to transfer the data between the Smartphone and the Nvidia Jetson TX2. Originality/value: The following points show the contributions of this paper to the robotic field. • Developed a robust application combining four different modes of functionality. • Create a program with an intuitive interface and simple use that allows controlling different robotics arms with just one UI. • Evaluate the applicability of the simulated industrial robots in ROS since the projects must be tested in a framework before implementing it in real robots