Machine Tool Communication (MTComm) Method and Its Applications in a Cyber-Physical Manufacturing Cloud

The integration of cyber-physical systems and cloud manufacturing has the potential to revolutionize existing manufacturing systems by enabling better accessibility, agility, and efficiency. To achieve this, it is necessary to establish a communication method of manufacturing services over the Internet to access and manage physical machines from cloud applications. Most of the existing industrial automation protocols utilize Ethernet based Local Area Network (LAN) and are not designed specifically for Internet enabled data transmission. Recently MTConnect has been gaining popularity as a standard for monitoring status of machine tools through RESTful web services and an XML based messaging structure, but it is only designed for data collection and interpretation and lacks remote operation capability. This dissertation presents the design, development, optimization, and applications of a service-oriented Internet-scale communication method named Machine Tool Communication (MTComm) for exchanging manufacturing services in a Cyber-Physical Manufacturing Cloud (CPMC) to enable manufacturing with heterogeneous physically connected machine tools from geographically distributed locations over the Internet. MTComm uses an agent-adapter based architecture and a semantic ontology to provide both remote monitoring and operation capabilities through RESTful services and XML messages. MTComm was successfully used to develop and implement multi-purpose applications in in a CPMC including remote and collaborative manufacturing, active testing-based and edge-based fault diagnosis and maintenance of machine tools, cross-domain interoperability between Internet-of-things (IoT) devices and supply chain robots etc. To improve MTComm’s overall performance, efficiency, and acceptability in cyber manufacturing, the concept of MTComm’s edge-based middleware was introduced and three optimization strategies for data catching, transmission, and operation execution were developed and adopted at the edge. Finally, a hardware prototype of the middleware was implemented on a System-On-Chip based FPGA device to reduce computational and transmission latency. At every stage of its development, MTComm’s performance and feasibility were evaluated with experiments in a CPMC testbed with three different types of manufacturing machine tools. Experimental results demonstrated MTComm’s excellent feasibility for scalable cyber-physical manufacturing and superior performance over other existing approaches

Machine Tool Communication (MTComm) Method and Its Applications in a Cyber-Physical Manufacturing Cloud

The integration of cyber-physical systems and cloud manufacturing has the potential to revolutionize existing manufacturing systems by enabling better accessibility, agility, and efficiency. To achieve this, it is necessary to establish a communication method of manufacturing services over the Internet to access and manage physical machines from cloud applications. Most of the existing industrial automation protocols utilize Ethernet based Local Area Network (LAN) and are not designed specifically for Internet enabled data transmission. Recently MTConnect has been gaining popularity as a standard for monitoring status of machine tools through RESTful web services and an XML based messaging structure, but it is only designed for data collection and interpretation and lacks remote operation capability. This dissertation presents the design, development, optimization, and applications of a service-oriented Internet-scale communication method named Machine Tool Communication (MTComm) for exchanging manufacturing services in a Cyber-Physical Manufacturing Cloud (CPMC) to enable manufacturing with heterogeneous physically connected machine tools from geographically distributed locations over the Internet. MTComm uses an agent-adapter based architecture and a semantic ontology to provide both remote monitoring and operation capabilities through RESTful services and XML messages. MTComm was successfully used to develop and implement multi-purpose applications in in a CPMC including remote and collaborative manufacturing, active testing-based and edge-based fault diagnosis and maintenance of machine tools, cross-domain interoperability between Internet-of-things (IoT) devices and supply chain robots etc. To improve MTComm’s overall performance, efficiency, and acceptability in cyber manufacturing, the concept of MTComm’s edge-based middleware was introduced and three optimization strategies for data catching, transmission, and operation execution were developed and adopted at the edge. Finally, a hardware prototype of the middleware was implemented on a System-On-Chip based FPGA device to reduce computational and transmission latency. At every stage of its development, MTComm’s performance and feasibility were evaluated with experiments in a CPMC testbed with three different types of manufacturing machine tools. Experimental results demonstrated MTComm’s excellent feasibility for scalable cyber-physical manufacturing and superior performance over other existing approaches

Modeling of Cloud-Based Digital Twins for Smart Manufacturing with MT Connect

The common modeling of digital twins uses an information model to describe the physical machines. The integration of digital twins into productive cyber-physical cloud manufacturing (CPCM) systems imposes strong demands such as reducing overhead and saving resources. In this paper, we develop and investigate a new method for building cloud-based digital twins (CBDT), which can be adapted to the CPCM platform. Our method helps reduce computing resources in the information processing center for efficient interactions between human users and physical machines. We introduce a knowledge resource center (KRC) built on a cloud server for information intensive applications. An information model for one type of 3D printers is designed and integrated into the core of the KRC as a shared resource. Several experiments are conducted and the results show that the CBDT has an excellent performance compared to existing methods

MTComm: A Semantic Ontology Based Internet Scale Communication Method of Manufacturing Services in a Cyber-Physical Manufacturing Cloud

A Cyber-Physical Manufacturing Cloud (CPMC) is an Internet-of-Things (IoT) enabled manufacturing framework that facilitates monitoring and operation of manufacturing machine tools remotely through the integration of IoT, cyber-physical systems, cloud computing, and advanced manufacturing technologies. To achieve this, it is necessary to develop a communication method of manufacturing services over the Internet in order to access and manage manufacturing resources from the cloud. This paper presents a semantic ontology based Internet scale communication method of manufacturing services named Machine Tool Communication (MTComm) in a CPMC to enable manufacturing with various physically connected machines from geographically distributed locations over the Internet. This paper presents design of an agent-adapter architecture of the communication method of exchanging manufacturing services across Internet, a semantic ontological representation of manufacturing machines and services, and specification of the ontology based MTComm method. It is the first Internet scale manufacturing service communication method of enabling manufacturing operations over the internet in addition to monitoring manufacturing services. MTComm is a significant improvement over the MTConnect, a widely popular communication method of manufacturing services which allows only monitoring machine tools over the Internet. It is implemented and tested in a testbed of the CPMC to analyze its performance in multiple manufacturing application scenarios. The experiments demonstrate excellent feasibility of monitoring and performing manufacturing operations over the Internet

Remote Monitoring and Online Testing of Machine Tools for Fault Diagnosis and Maintenance Using MTComm in a Cyber-Physical Manufacturing Cloud

Existing systems allow manufacturers to acquire factory floor data and perform analysis with cloud applications for machine health monitoring, product quality prediction, fault diagnosis and prognosis etc. However, they do not provide capabilities to perform testing of machine tools and associated components remotely, which is often crucial to identify causes of failure. This paper presents a fault diagnosis system in a cyber-physical manufacturing cloud (CPMC) that allows manufacturers to perform diagnosis and maintenance of manufacturing machine tools through remote monitoring and online testing using Machine Tool Communication (MTComm). MTComm is an Internet scale communication method that enables both monitoring and operation of heterogeneous machine tools through RESTful web services over the Internet. It allows manufacturers to perform testing operations from cloud applications at both machine and component level for regular maintenance and fault diagnosis. This paper describes different components of the system and their functionalities in CPMC and techniques used for anomaly detection and remote online testing using MTComm. It also presents the development of a prototype of the proposed system in a CPMC testbed. Experiments were conducted to evaluate its performance to diagnose faults and test machine tools remotely during various manufacturing scenarios. The results demonstrated excellent feasibility to detect anomaly during manufacturing operations and perform testing operations remotely from cloud applications using MTComm

Communication method for manufacturing services in a cyber–physical manufacturing cloud

The integration of cyber–physical systems and cloud manufacturing has potential to change manufacturing processes for better manufacturing accessibility, agility, and efficiency. To achieve this, it is necessary to establish a communication method of manufacturing services over the Internet in order to access and manage manufacturing resources from the cloud. Most of the existing industrial automation protocols utilise Ethernet-based Local Area Network (LAN) and are not designed specifically for communication of manufacturing services over the Internet. MTConnect has been gaining popularity as a standard for monitoring status of the machine tools remotely, but it is designed for communication of read-only monitoring data of machine tools. This paper presents an agent–adapter-based communication method of manufacturing services in a cyber–physical manufacturing cloud (CPMC) to enable manufacturing with various physically connected machines from geographically distributed locations over the Internet. The system uses MTConnect for monitoring and HTTP-based communication method for operating manufacturing resources through the cloud. This integrated approach allows machine tools to communicate with each other over the Internet in manufacturing processes. This paper presents design of the agent–adapter architecture of the integrated communication method of manufacturing services and then discusses the system’s capability of conducting collaborative manufacturing using the communication method. A testbed of the CPMC using the communication method is developed and it is described in detail in this paper. Two empirical studies are presented in order to show the performance of the proposed communication method and CPMC in multiple manufacturing scenarios. It demonstrates excellent feasibility and effectiveness of the communication method and cyber–physical manufacturing cloud for manufacturing with machines in geographically distributed locations

Cyber-physical manufacturing cloud: Architecture, virtualization, communication, and testbed

Cyber-physical systems are integrations of computation, networking, and physical processes and they are increasingly finding applications in manufacturing. Cloud manufacturing integrates cloud computing and service-oriented technologies with manufacturing processes and provides manufacturing services in manufacturing clouds. A cyber physical system for manufacturing is not a manufacturing cloud if it does not use virtualization technique in cloud computing and service oriented architecture in service computing. On the other hand, a manufacturing cloud is not cyber physical system if it does not have components for direct interactions with machine tools and other physical devices. In this paper, a new paradigm of Cyber-Physical Manufacturing Cloud (CPMC) is introduced to bridge gaps among cloud computing, cyber physical systems, and manufacturing. A CPMC allows direct operations and monitoring of machine tools in a manufacturing cloud over the Internet. A scalable and service-oriented layered architecture of CPMC is developed. It allows publication and subscription of manufacturing web services and cross-platform applications in CPMC. A virtualization method of manufacturing resources in CPMC is presented. In addition, communication mechanisms between the layers of the CPMC using communication protocols such as MTConnect, TCP/IP, and REST are discussed. A CPMC testbed is developed and implemented based on the proposed architecture. The testbed is fully operational in two geographically distributed sites. The developed testbed is evaluated using several manufacturing scenarios. Its testing results demonstrate that it can monitor and execute manufacturing operations remotely over the Internet efficiently in a manufacturing cloud

Design and Implementation of Cyber-Physical Manufacturing Cloud Using MTConnect

Cyber-physical systems are gaining momentum in the domain of manufacturing. Cloud Manufacturing is also revolutionizing the manufacturing world. However, although there exist numerous physical manufacturing machines which are network-ready, very few of them are operated in a networked environment due to lack of scalability of existing cyber-physical systems. Combining the features offered by cloud manufacturing and cyber-physical systems, we develop a service-oriented architecture of scalable cyber-physical manufacturing cloud with MTConnect. A testbed of cyber-physical manufacturing cloud is being developed based on the above scalable architecture. In this system, manufacturing machines and their capabilities virtualized in a cyber-physical cloud. Manufacturing operations are represented as web services so that they are accessible across the Internet. Performance of the testbed of our cyber-physical manufacturing cloud with MTConnect is evaluated and test results show that our system achieves excellent service performance of manufacturing operations across Internet

MTComm Based Virtualization and Integration of Physical Machine Operations with Digital-Twins in Cyber-Physical Manufacturing Cloud

Digital-Twins simulate physical world objects by creating as-is virtual images in a cyberspace. In order to create a well synchronized digital-twin simulator in manufacturing, information and activities of a physical machine need to be virtualized. Many existing digital-twins stream read-only data of machine sensors and do not incorporate operations of manufacturing machines through Internet. In this paper, a new method of virtualization is proposed to integrate machining data and operations into the digital-twins using Internet scale machine tool communication method. A fully functional digital-twin is implemented in CPMC testbed using MTComm and several manufacturing application scenarios are developed to evaluate the proposed method and system. Performance analysis shows that it is capable of providing data-driven visual monitoring of a manufacturing process and performing manufacturing operations through digital twins over the Internet. Results of the experiments also shows that the MTComm based digital twins have an excellent efficiency

Design and Implementation of Cyber-Physical Manufacturing Cloud Using MTConnect

Cyber-physical systems are gaining momentum in the domain of manufacturing. Cloud Manufacturing is also revolutionizing the manufacturing world. However, although there exist numerous physical manufacturing machines which are network-ready, very few of them are operated in a networked environment due to lack of scalability of existing cyber-physical systems. Combining the features offered by cloud manufacturing and cyber-physical systems, we develop a service-oriented architecture of scalable cyber-physical manufacturing cloud with MTConnect. A testbed of cyber-physical manufacturing cloud is being developed based on the above scalable architecture. In this system, manufacturing machines and their capabilities virtualized in a cyber-physical cloud. Manufacturing operations are represented as web services so that they are accessible across the Internet. Performance of the testbed of our cyber-physical manufacturing cloud with MTConnect is evaluated and test results show that our system achieves excellent service performance of manufacturing operations across Internet