Plug & Produce Devices and Machine Demonstrators (WP5)
The purpose of this work packages is to demonstrate real automation devices and machines with embedded plug & produce capability and intelligent self-adjustment. This is to demonstrate that both a range of different representative devices, machines and robots and also to fully embedded these capabilities in such a way that new, close to market products will be ready at TRL8 by the end of the project. This is an important requirement both from the project partners perspective (especially SMEs who do not have development overheads they can spend on blue sky work) and for an Innovation Action.
A number of different, representative automation devices have been chosen to show that the plug-and-produce concept of openMOS can be applied not in niche areas but across the whole range of automation devices; from the very simple actuators and sensors to complex machines, vehicles and robots. The other dimension intended to be covered with the different plug-and-produce demonstrators is integration of different levels of intelligence (simple devices and complex machines) and direct embedding vs. software wrappers as interfaces to existing controllers.
Furthermore, there are two aspects to flexibility which are covered as part of openMOS. Integration/changeover flexibility of devices/machines and routing flexibility of the transport and material handling system. Both have their own unique challenges.
Machine resources directly affect the product and its quality and apply a value adding process. Transport is in itself not value adding but required to move between different machines to achieve the overall process goals. Both have different performance and energy usage optimisation requirements. Hence, instances of both types of devices have been chosen to be enhanced with plug-and-produce capabilities as part of WP5 and to cover the full range of an automatic production system. This is also required to truly prove the readiness of the overall openMOS technology platform for production. Hence the specific development and demonstration objectives can be defined for all devices with the following generic stages. The specific detailed implementation will vary a little bit from devices to devices.
- Stage 1: Specification of functionality, required interfaces and plug-and-produce capability.
- Stage 2: Building or enhancing of prototype device
- Stage 3: TRL5 testing of plug-and-produce functionality as standalone device
- Stage 4: TRL6 testing of the device in a wider industry like context (WP6) -> automatic recognition and skill execution.
- Stage 5: TRL7 testing within an industry like context (WP6) -> full monitoring and self-adaptation capabilities
- Stage 6: TRL8 validation at the industrial pilot sites (WP7) -> Fully compliance test will need to have been performed.