A Digital Twin-based paradigm for programming and control of cooperating robots in reconfigurable production systems

Abstract

The shift towards product personalization is the main enabler behind Industry 4.0 and drives the need to deploy flexible and reconfigurable assembly systems. This paper investigates the use of Digital Twins (DT) for enabling system flexibility and reconfigurability through various functionalities, leading to an overall resilience in the system. The suggested DT infrastructure involves two main components: a) Virtual representation of the shop floor, combining multiple sensor data and CAD models and b) Real-time multi-robot behaviour control. The communication layer between the physical and the virtual agents in the level of Digital Twin is realised through the ROS framework. The integration of the DT in an overall production system with various components (like planning systems) is realised through the Asset Administration Shell (AAS) and custom ROS-AAS connectors responsible for translating data between the two formats. Finally, an orchestration system (referred as Station Controller) that is responsible for dispatching planned tasks to the assigned resources has been implemented. The developed infrastructure is validated through a case study inspired by the consumer electronics industry focusing on the assembly of two different products, a trimmer head, and a monitor cover. Nevertheless, the proposed solution has been designed to be easily applicable to any similar scenario.