Friday May 2nd 2021
The SUPSI ISTePS team has introduced the second-year bachelor management engineers to Industrial Automation and digital technologies, including a demo on cobots.
Management engineers are not specialist in developing and coding solutions; however, they are essential in managing technologies, introduce innovation in companies and driving the digital transformation in the industry. Regarding AR and Cobots, the lesson goal was to understand the main functionalities and benefits and the challenges of Human-Machine interaction.
First, a theoretical lesson in the classroom presented an overview on industrial automation, introducing PLCs and the Ladder programming language. Later, students visited the SUPSI Mini-Factory 4.0, a small scale fully automated and customizable learning factory.
Researchers of the Mini-Factory team presented the different digital technologies installed in the plant. Thanks to the contribution of Mirrorlabs material and nuggets, they were able to showcase the advantages of AR, Digital Twin, and Cobots:
AR. Students could try first-hand the feeling of wearing and interacting with the Microsoft HoloLens 2.
Digital Twin. The Mini-Factory features a digital twin, which displays in real-time the status of the plant. Students were presented with the Digital twin's benefits, namely Virtual Commissioning, Test, and assets monitoring in this case.
Cobots. The latest project developed in the Mini-Factory was showcased for the scope. SUPSI researchers have implemented an automated bearing test station for an Industrial Partner. The goal was to detect defective bearings before the assembly into the final product with a very fast and non-destructive test. The test station spins the bearing and an accelerometer measures vibrations. Thanks to a machine-learning algorithm, the condition of the tested bearing is analyzed by means of detecting anomalies with respect to the normal spectrum of vibration of a healthy bearing. The ones that are found out of bounds are than discarded. A cobot is in charge to load and unload bearings on the test station.
The lesson had great feedback from the Students, which showed much appreciation. From this experience, we are planning to introduce a 4 hours nugget on the basis of Mirrorlabs results to the Industrial Internet of Things course, which will explain more in-depth augmented reality and the use of cobots to students with IT and electronic backgrounds, giving them a hands on experience on the matter.
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