TY - JOUR A1 - Cheng, Chi-Tsun A1 - Wollert, Jörg A1 - Chen, Xi A1 - Fapojuwo, Abraham O. T1 - Guest Editorial : Circuits and Systems for Industry X.0 Applications JF - IEEE Journal on Emerging and Selected Topics in Circuits and Systems Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/JETCAS.2023.3278843 SN - 2156-3357 (Print) SN - 2156-3365 (Online) VL - 13 SP - 457 EP - 460 PB - IEEE CY - New York ET - 2 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ulmer, Jessica A1 - Braun, Carsten A1 - Cheng, Chi-Tsun A1 - Dowey, Steve A1 - Wollert, Jörg T1 - A human factors-aware assistance system in manufacturing based on gamification and hardware modularisation JF - International Journal of Production Research N2 - Assistance systems have been widely adopted in the manufacturing sector to facilitate various processes and tasks in production environments. However, existing systems are mostly equipped with rigid functional logic and do not provide individual user experiences or adapt to their capabilities. This work integrates human factors in assistance systems by adjusting the hardware and instruction presented to the workers’ cognitive and physical demands. A modular system architecture is designed accordingly, which allows a flexible component exchange according to the user and the work task. Gamification, the use of game elements in non-gaming contexts, has been further adopted in this work to provide level-based instructions and personalised feedback. The developed framework is validated by applying it to a manual workstation for industrial assembly routines. KW - Human factors KW - assistance system KW - gamification KW - adaptive systems KW - manufacturing Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00207543.2023.2166140 SN - 0020-7543 (Print) SN - 1366-588X (Online) PB - Taylor & Francis ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Chavez Bermudez, Victor Francisco A1 - Wollert, Jörg T1 - 10BASE-T1L industry 4.0 smart switch for field devices based on IO-Link T2 - 2022 IEEE 18th International Conference on Factory Communication Systems (WFCS) N2 - The recent amendment to the Ethernet physical layer known as the IEEE 802.3cg specification, allows to connect devices up to a distance of one kilometer and delivers a maximum of 60 watts of power over a twisted pair of wires. This new standard, also known as 10BASE-TIL, promises to overcome the limits of current physical layers used for field devices and bring them a step closer to Ethernet-based applications. The main advantage of 10BASE- TIL is that it can deliver power and data over the same line over a long distance, where traditional solutions (e.g., CAN, IO-Link, HART) fall short and cannot match its 10 Mbps bandwidth. Due to its recentness, IOBASE- TIL is still not integrated into field devices and it has been less than two years since silicon manufacturers released the first Ethernet-PHY chips. In this paper, we present a design proposal on how field devices could be integrated into a IOBASE-TIL smart switch that allows plug-and-play connectivity for sensors and actuators and is compliant with the Industry 4.0 vision. Instead of presenting a new field-level protocol for this work, we have decided to adopt the IO-Link specification which already includes a plug-and-play approach with features such as diagnosis and device configuration. The main objective of this work is to explore how field devices could be integrated into 10BASE-TIL Ethernet, its adaption with a well-known protocol, and its integration with Industry 4.0 technologies. KW - 10BASE-T1L KW - Ethernet KW - Field device KW - Sensors KW - IO-Link Y1 - 2022 SN - 978-1-6654-1086-1 SN - 978-1-6654-1087-8 U6 - http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/WFCS53837.2022.9779176 N1 - 2022 IEEE 18th International Conference on Factory Communication Systems (WFCS), 27-29 April 2022, Pavia, Italy- PB - IEEE ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Ulmer, Jessica A1 - Braun, Sebastian A1 - Cheng, Chi-Tsun A1 - Dowey, Steve A1 - Wollert, Jörg T1 - Usage of digital twins for gamification applications in manufacturing T2 - Procedia CIRP N2 - Gamification applications are on the rise in the manufacturing sector to customize working scenarios, offer user-specific feedback, and provide personalized learning offerings. Commonly, different sensors are integrated into work environments to track workers’ actions. Game elements are selected according to the work task and users’ preferences. However, implementing gamified workplaces remains challenging as different data sources must be established, evaluated, and connected. Developers often require information from several areas of the companies to offer meaningful gamification strategies for their employees. Moreover, work environments and the associated support systems are usually not flexible enough to adapt to personal needs. Digital twins are one primary possibility to create a uniform data approach that can provide semantic information to gamification applications. Frequently, several digital twins have to interact with each other to provide information about the workplace, the manufacturing process, and the knowledge of the employees. This research aims to create an overview of existing digital twin approaches for digital support systems and presents a concept to use digital twins for gamified support and training systems. The concept is based upon the Reference Architecture Industry 4.0 (RAMI 4.0) and includes information about the whole life cycle of the assets. It is applied to an existing gamified training system and evaluated in the Industry 4.0 model factory by an example of a handle mounting. KW - Gamification KW - Digital Twin KW - Support System Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.procir.2022.05.044 SN - 2212-8271 N1 - 55th CIRP Conference on Manufacturing Systems VL - 107 SP - 675 EP - 680 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ulmer, Jessica A1 - Braun, Sebastian A1 - Cheng, Chi-Tsun A1 - Dowey, Steve A1 - Wollert, Jörg T1 - Gamification of virtual reality assembly training: Effects of a combined point and level system on motivation and training results JF - International Journal of Human-Computer Studies N2 - Virtual Reality (VR) offers novel possibilities for remote training regardless of the availability of the actual equipment, the presence of specialists, and the training locations. Research shows that training environments that adapt to users' preferences and performance can promote more effective learning. However, the observed results can hardly be traced back to specific adaptive measures but the whole new training approach. This study analyzes the effects of a combined point and leveling VR-based gamification system on assembly training targeting specific training outcomes and users' motivations. The Gamified-VR-Group with 26 subjects received the gamified training, and the Non-Gamified-VR-Group with 27 subjects received the alternative without gamified elements. Both groups conducted their VR training at least three times before assembling the actual structure. The study found that a level system that gradually increases the difficulty and error probability in VR can significantly lower real-world error rates, self-corrections, and support usages. According to our study, a high error occurrence at the highest training level reduced the Gamified-VR-Group's feeling of competence compared to the Non-Gamified-VR-Group, but at the same time also led to lower error probabilities in real-life. It is concluded that a level system with a variable task difficulty should be combined with carefully balanced positive and negative feedback messages. This way, better learning results, and an improved self-evaluation can be achieved while not causing significant impacts on the participants' feeling of competence. KW - Gamification KW - Virtual reality KW - Assembly KW - User study KW - Level system Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2022.102854 SN - 1071-5819 VL - 165 IS - Art. No. 102854 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Evans, Benjamin A1 - Braun, Sebastian A1 - Ulmer, Jessica A1 - Wollert, Jörg T1 - AAS implementations - current problems and solutions T2 - 20th International Conference on Mechatronics - Mechatronika (ME) N2 - The fourth industrial revolution presents a multitude of challenges for industries, one of which being the increased flexibility required of manufacturing lines as a result of increased consumer demand for individualised products. One solution to tackle this challenge is the digital twin, more specifically the standardised model of a digital twin also known as the asset administration shell. The standardisation of an industry wide communications tool is a critical step in enabling inter-company operations. This paper discusses the current state of asset administration shells, the frameworks used to host them and their problems that need to be addressed. To tackle these issues, we propose an event-based server capable of drastically reducing response times between assets and asset administration shells and a multi-agent system used for the orchestration and deployment of the shells in the field. KW - Industry 4.0 KW - Multi-agent Systems KW - Digital Twin KW - Asset Administration Shell Y1 - 2022 SN - 978-1-6654-1040-3 U6 - http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ME54704.2022.9982933 PB - IEEE ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Chavez Bermudez, Victor Francisco A1 - Cruz Castanon, Victor Fernando A1 - Ruchay, Marco A1 - Wollert, Jörg ED - Leipzig, Hochschule für Technik, Wirtschaft und Kultur T1 - Rapid prototyping framework for automation applications based on IO-Link T2 - Tagungsband AALE 2022 N2 - The development of protype applications with sensors and actuators in the automation industry requires tools that are independent of manufacturer, and are flexible enough to be modified or extended for any specific requirements. Currently, developing prototypes with industrial sensors and actuators is not straightforward. First of all, the exchange of information depends on the industrial protocol that these devices have. Second, a specific configuration and installation is done based on the hardware that is used, such as automation controllers or industrial gateways. This means that the development for a specific industrial protocol, highly depends on the hardware and the software that vendors provide. In this work we propose a rapid-prototyping framework based on Arduino to solve this problem. For this project we have focused to work with the IO-Link protocol. The framework consists of an Arduino shield that acts as the physical layer, and a software that implements the IO-Link Master protocol. The main advantage of such framework is that an application with industrial devices can be rapid-prototyped with ease as its vendor independent, open-source and can be ported easily to other Arduino compatible boards. In comparison, a typical approach requires proprietary hardware, is not easy to port to another system and is closed-source. KW - Rapid-prototyping KW - Arduino KW - IO-Link KW - Industrial Communication Y1 - 2022 SN - 978-3-910103-00-9 U6 - http://dx.doi.org/10.33968/2022.28 N1 - 18. AALE-Konferenz, Pforzheim, 09.03.-11.03.2022. CY - Leipzig ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Ulmer, Jessica A1 - Braun, Sebastian A1 - Cheng, Chi-Tsun A1 - Dowey, Steve A1 - Wollert, Jörg T1 - Adapting Augmented Reality Systems to the users’ needs using Gamification and error solving methods T2 - Procedia CIRP N2 - Animations of virtual items in AR support systems are typically predefined and lack interactions with dynamic physical environments. AR applications rarely consider users’ preferences and do not provide customized spontaneous support under unknown situations. This research focuses on developing adaptive, error-tolerant AR systems based on directed acyclic graphs and error resolving strategies. Using this approach, users will have more freedom of choice during AR supported work, which leads to more efficient workflows. Error correction methods based on CAD models and predefined process data create individual support possibilities. The framework is implemented in the Industry 4.0 model factory at FH Aachen. KW - Augmented Reality KW - Adaptive Systems KW - Gamification KW - Error Recovery Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.procir.2021.11.024 SN - 2212-8271 N1 - Part of special issue: 54th CIRP CMS 2021 - Towards Digitalized Manufacturing 4.0 VL - 104 SP - 140 EP - 145 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Braun, Sebastian A1 - Cheng, Chi-Tsun A1 - Dowey, Steve A1 - Wollert, Jörg T1 - Performance evaluation of skill-based order-assignment in production environments with multi-agent systems JF - IEEE Journal of Emerging and Selected Topics in Industrial Electronics N2 - The fourth industrial revolution introduces disruptive technologies to production environments. One of these technologies are multi-agent systems (MASs), where agents virtualize machines. However, the agent's actual performances in production environments can hardly be estimated as most research has been focusing on isolated projects and specific scenarios. We address this gap by implementing a highly connected and configurable reference model with quantifiable key performance indicators (KPIs) for production scheduling and routing in single-piece workflows. Furthermore, we propose an algorithm to optimize the search of extrema in highly connected distributed systems. The benefits, limits, and drawbacks of MASs and their performances are evaluated extensively by event-based simulations against the introduced model, which acts as a benchmark. Even though the performance of the proposed MAS is, on average, slightly lower than the reference system, the increased flexibility allows it to find new solutions and deliver improved factory-planning outcomes. Our MAS shows an emerging behavior by using flexible production techniques to correct errors and compensate for bottlenecks. This increased flexibility offers substantial improvement potential. The general model in this paper allows the transfer of the results to estimate real systems or other models. KW - cyber-physical production systems KW - event-based simulation KW - multi-agent systems KW - digital factory KW - industrial agents Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/JESTIE.2021.3108524 SN - 2687-9735 IS - Early Access PB - IEEE CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Engemann, Heiko A1 - Cönen, Patrick A1 - Dawar, Harshal A1 - Du, Shengzhi A1 - Kallweit, Stephan T1 - A robot-assisted large-scale inspection of wind turbine blades in manufacturing using an autonomous mobile manipulator JF - Applied Sciences N2 - Wind energy represents the dominant share of renewable energies. The rotor blades of a wind turbine are typically made from composite material, which withstands high forces during rotation. The huge dimensions of the rotor blades complicate the inspection processes in manufacturing. The automation of inspection processes has a great potential to increase the overall productivity and to create a consistent reliable database for each individual rotor blade. The focus of this paper is set on the process of rotor blade inspection automation by utilizing an autonomous mobile manipulator. The main innovations include a novel path planning strategy for zone-based navigation, which enables an intuitive right-hand or left-hand driving behavior in a shared human–robot workspace. In addition, we introduce a new method for surface orthogonal motion planning in connection with large-scale structures. An overall execution strategy controls the navigation and manipulation processes of the long-running inspection task. The implemented concepts are evaluated in simulation and applied in a real-use case including the tip of a rotor blade form. KW - mobile manipulation KW - large-scale inspection KW - wind turbine production KW - autonomous navigation KW - surface-orthogonal path planning Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/app11199271 SN - 2076-3417 N1 - Belongs to the Special Issue "Advances in Industrial Robotics and Intelligent Systems" VL - 11 IS - 19 SP - 1 EP - 22 PB - MDPI CY - Basel ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Franko, Josef A1 - Du, Shengzhi A1 - Kallweit, Stephan A1 - Duelberg, Enno Sebastian A1 - Engemann, Heiko T1 - Design of a Multi-Robot System for Wind Turbine Maintenance JF - Energies N2 - The maintenance of wind turbines is of growing importance considering the transition to renewable energy. This paper presents a multi-robot-approach for automated wind turbine maintenance including a novel climbing robot. Currently, wind turbine maintenance remains a manual task, which is monotonous, dangerous, and also physically demanding due to the large scale of wind turbines. Technical climbers are required to work at significant heights, even in bad weather conditions. Furthermore, a skilled labor force with sufficient knowledge in repairing fiber composite material is rare. Autonomous mobile systems enable the digitization of the maintenance process. They can be designed for weather-independent operations. This work contributes to the development and experimental validation of a maintenance system consisting of multiple robotic platforms for a variety of tasks, such as wind turbine tower and rotor blade service. In this work, multicopters with vision and LiDAR sensors for global inspection are used to guide slower climbing robots. Light-weight magnetic climbers with surface contact were used to analyze structure parts with non-destructive inspection methods and to locally repair smaller defects. Localization was enabled by adapting odometry for conical-shaped surfaces considering additional navigation sensors. Magnets were suitable for steel towers to clamp onto the surface. A friction-based climbing ring robot (SMART— Scanning, Monitoring, Analyzing, Repair and Transportation) completed the set-up for higher payload. The maintenance period could be extended by using weather-proofed maintenance robots. The multi-robot-system was running the Robot Operating System (ROS). Additionally, first steps towards machine learning would enable maintenance staff to use pattern classification for fault diagnosis in order to operate safely from the ground in the future. Y1 - 2020 U6 - http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/en13102552 SN - 1996-1073 VL - 13 IS - 10 SP - Article 2552 PB - MDPI CY - Basel ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Engemann, Heiko A1 - Du, Shengzhi A1 - Kallweit, Stephan A1 - Ning, Chuanfang A1 - Anwar, Saqib T1 - AutoSynPose: Automatic Generation of Synthetic Datasets for 6D Object Pose Estimation T2 - Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. Proceedings of MLIS 2020 N2 - We present an automated pipeline for the generation of synthetic datasets for six-dimension (6D) object pose estimation. Therefore, a completely automated generation process based on predefined settings is developed, which enables the user to create large datasets with a minimum of interaction and which is feasible for applications with a high object variance. The pipeline is based on the Unreal 4 (UE4) game engine and provides a high variation for domain randomization, such as object appearance, ambient lighting, camera-object transformation and distractor density. In addition to the object pose and bounding box, the metadata includes all randomization parameters, which enables further studies on randomization parameter tuning. The developed workflow is adaptable to other 3D objects and UE4 environments. An exemplary dataset is provided including five objects of the Yale-CMU-Berkeley (YCB) object set. The datasets consist of 6 million subsegments using 97 rendering locations in 12 different UE4 environments. Each dataset subsegment includes one RGB image, one depth image and one class segmentation image at pixel-level. Y1 - 2020 SN - 978-1-64368-137-5 U6 - http://dx.doi.org/10.3233/FAIA200770 N1 - Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications. Vol 332 SP - 89 EP - 97 PB - IOS Press CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Engemann, Heiko A1 - Du, Shengzhi A1 - Kallweit, Stephan A1 - Cönen, Patrick A1 - Dawar, Harshal T1 - OMNIVIL - an autonomous mobile manipulator for flexible production JF - Sensors Y1 - 2020 SN - 1424-8220 U6 - http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s20247249 N1 - Special issue: Sensor Networks Applications in Robotics and Mobile Systems VL - 20 IS - 24, art. no. 7249 SP - 1 EP - 30 PB - MDPI CY - Basel ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Ulmer, Jessica A1 - Braun, Sebastian A1 - Cheng, Chi-Tsun A1 - Dowey, Steve A1 - Wollert, Jörg T1 - Gamified Virtual Reality Training Environment for the Manufacturing Industry Y1 - 2020 U6 - http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ME49197.2020.9286661 SP - 1 EP - 6 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Engemann, Heiko A1 - Wiesen, Patrick A1 - Kallweit, Stephan A1 - Deshpande, Harshavardhan A1 - Schleupen, Josef T1 - Autonomous mobile manipulation using ROS T2 - Advances in Service and Industrial Robotics Y1 - 2018 SN - 978-3-319-61276-8 U6 - http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61276-8_43 N1 - International Conference on Robotics in Alpe-Adria Danube Region RAAD 2017; Mechanisms and Machince Science book series, Vol 49. SP - 389 EP - 401 PB - Springer CY - Cham ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Wiesen, Patrick A1 - Engemann, Heiko A1 - Limpert, Nicolas A1 - Kallweit, Stephan T1 - Learning by Doing - Mobile Robotics in the FH Aachen ROS Summer School T2 - European Robotics Forum 2018, TRROS18 Workshop Y1 - 2018 SP - 47 EP - 58 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Schleupen, Josef A1 - Engemann, Heiko A1 - Bagheri, Mohsen A1 - Kallweit, Stephan A1 - Dahmann, Peter T1 - Developing a climbing maintenance robot for tower and rotor blade service of wind turbines T2 - Advances in Robot Design and Intelligent Control : Proceedings of the 25th Conference on Robotics in Alpe-Adria-Danube Region (RAAD16) Y1 - 2017 SN - 978-3-319-49058-8 U6 - http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49058-8_34 N1 - Advances in Robot Design and Intelligent Control ; Vol. 540 SP - 310 EP - 319 PB - Springer CY - Cham ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Kallweit, Stephan A1 - Gottschalk, Michael A1 - Walenta, Robert T1 - ROS based safety concept for collaborative robots in industrial applications T2 - Advances in robot design and intelligent control : proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Robotics in Alpe-Adria-Danube Region (RAAD). (Advances in intelligent systems and computing ; 371) N2 - The production and assembly of customized products increases the demand for flexible automation systems. One approach is to remove the safety fences that separate human and industrial robot to combine their skills. This collaboration possesses a certain risk for the human co-worker, leading to numerous safety concepts to protect him. The human needs to be monitored and tracked by a safety system using different sensors. The proposed system consists of a RGBD camera for surveillance of the common working area, an array of optical distance sensors to compensate shadowing effects of the RGBD camera and a laser range finder to detect the co-worker when approaching the work cell. The software for collision detection, path planning, robot control and predicting the behaviour of the co-worker is based on the Robot Operating System (ROS). A first prototype of the work cell shows that with advanced algorithms from the field of mobile robotics a very flexible safety concept can be realized: the robot not simply stops its movement when detecting a collision, but plans and executes an alternative path around the obstacle. KW - Collaborative robot KW - Human-Robot interaction KW - Safety concept KW - Workspace monitoring KW - Path planning Y1 - 2016 SN - 978-3-319-21289-0 (Print) ; 978-3-319-21290-6 (E-Book) U6 - http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21290-6_3 SP - 27 EP - 35 PB - Springer CY - Cham ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Ferrein, Alexander A1 - Kallweit, Stephan A1 - Scholl, Ingrid A1 - Reichert, Walter T1 - Learning to Program Mobile Robots in the ROS Summer School Series T2 - Proceedings 6th International Conference on Robotics in Education (RiE 15) N2 - The main objective of our ROS Summer School series is to introduce MA level students to program mobile robots with the Robot Operating System (ROS). ROS is a robot middleware that is used my many research institutions world-wide. Therefore, many state-of-the-art algorithms of mobile robotics are available in ROS and can be deployed very easily. As a basic robot platform we deploy a 1/10 RC cart that is wquipped with an Arduino micro-controller to control the servo motors, and an embedded PC that runs ROS. In two weeks, participants get to learn the basics of mobile robotics hands-on. We describe our teaching concepts and our curriculum and report on the learning success of our students. Y1 - 2015 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Alhwarin, Faraj A1 - Ferrein, Alexander A1 - Gebhardt, Andreas A1 - Kallweit, Stephan A1 - Scholl, Ingrid A1 - Tedjasukmana, Osmond Sanjaya T1 - Improving additive manufacturing by image processing and robotic milling T2 - 2015 IEEE International Conference on Automation Science and Engineering (CASE), Aug 24-28, 2015 Gothenburg, Sweden Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/CoASE.2015.7294217 SP - 924 EP - 929 ER -