Cell Level Early Demonstration and Testing (WP6)

Work package 6 has two roles in the project. 1) Their first role is to facilitate the industrialisation and maturing of plug-and-produce technology by providing test beds to deploy the plug-and-produce devices, machines and interfaces developed in WP5 to be deployed and rigorously tested under industry like conditions. Three different test beds have been selected to test different aspects of the project and for different requirements. The purpose of all three demonstration sites is to mature plug-and-produce technology up to TRL6 before it can be deployed at the three pilot sites (WP7). The test beds will subsequently be used in parallel to further mature and test the devices to allow them to individually demonstrate TRL8 capability before the end of the project. 2) Their second role is to allow early testing of results and give focus to development with equipment available since the very beginning of the project. This is realistic as all three test beds will use hardware and software infrastructure which is already available at Masmec, Introsys and the research partner’s labs.

The test beds have been carefully chosen for their complementarity, industrial closeness and already available infrastructure. The demonstrator from the IDEAS project will be used at Masmec to focus on medium sized, conveyor-based assembly systems which are most similar to Electrolux and SenseAir. Introsys is providing their robotic joining demonstrator to represent the needs for larger robotic assembly. Their cell replicates the conditions in the Automotive industry using the same control and integration standards. They will also include an Automatic Guided Vehicle (AGV) to emulate multi-stage processes and test the compatibility of the openMOS system with vehicle based transport systems.

The overall objective of this work package is to test and mature the openMOS plug-and-produce modules and wider integration technology platform. This means that all technology modules and software prototypes will have to be demonstrated to achieve TRL6 and higher if possible.

• Stage 1: Integration of any required hardware and software adaptations. Specification of the different plug-and-produce modules which will be retrofitted with openMOS technology for testing in addition to the integrated plug-and-produce devices developed in WP5.
• Stage 2: Plug-and-produce readiness of all the chosen resource modules (devices, machines and robots) as well as transport systems for dynamic routing. Verification of plug-and-produce sensor node integration and dynamic product tracking. (TRL6-7 for individual devices, machines and robots including transport).
• Stage 3: Integration of wider dynamic monitoring, simulation and optimisation approaches will be tested. The IDEAS demonstrator will focus here on energy usage optimisation and dynamic routing of pallets while the Introsys demonstrator will focus on rapid integration and parameter tuning issues. The final test bed will focus on scalability issues using the facilities of the research partner’s labs as a networked test environment with virtual products. TRL 6 for the overall openMOS technology platform needs to be achieved.

Results from this test bed will be fed into the demonstration activities of the industrial demonstrators (WP7).