JR Centre for Intelligent and Secure Industrial Automation

Industry 4.0 includes the vision of autonomous, rapidly adapting and optimising value chains. This in turn requires autonomous and intelligent industrial machines of high complexity. Digital assistants are being researched here to control and monitor these highly complex machines, thus relieving the burden on human operators and pushing the boundaries of operability.

Automation as part of the third industrial revolution led to machines that are optimised for repeatable and fast processes. However, the resulting increase in product diversity was only achieved with the help of a large variety of rigid machines.

Personalisation of goods, production in batch sizes of one and shorter time-to-market for new products are the vision of Industry 4.0. To achieve this, entire value chains must be optimised and not just isolated machines. This requires a new paradigm of adaptable, digitised, interconnected machines, reaching entirely new levels of complexity, not only in terms of the design of these systems, but also in terms of human operation. As a result, industrial machines must become more autonomous and intelligent in order to reduce the burden on human operators while increasing flexibility and complexity.

These autonomous machines form cyber-physical systems with network connections beyond the operational network boundaries. Security for industrial machines and communication is a key aspect here, which goes hand in hand with a continuous reduction in human control and monitoring.

The methods and mechanisms required for intelligent and safe industrial automation require an adequate system architecture that provides the necessary environment, mechanisms and flexibility.

This JR Centre is concerned with the three research fields of (i) system architecture, (ii) intelligent operation and (iii) security. These three areas are interdependent, but also mutually beneficial, and together form the framework for a digital assistant.

At its core, the digital assistant is about artificial intelligence in the true sense of the word, namely acting rationally in a problem that would otherwise be solved by human intelligence. This means that the digital assistant receives perceptions from an environment and influences the environment by recommending actions to human operators or presenting information, selecting parameterisations of machines or controlling machines autonomously.

Ultimately, the digital assistant should be able to relieve and support the human operator by assisting with the monitoring and control of machines such as injection moulding machines, milling or turning machines, labelling or filling machines and the like.