Toshihiro Inukai

Efficient manufacturing system implementation based on combination between real and virtual factory

At present, before real factories are implemented on the shop floor, methods to evaluate facility control programs for equipment, such as ladder programs for programmable logic controllers (PLC) while mixing and synchronizing real equipment and virtual factory models on the computers, have not been developed. Digital data as virtual factory models which are defined at a design stage cannot be re-used at an implementation stage. These difficulties stop precise and rapid support of a manufacturing system engineering process from the design stage to the implementation stage. In this paper, an intermediation environment to connect real factories and virtual factories is first proposed. This environment consists of a distributed real manufacturing simulation environment (DRMSE) and a distributed simulation environment (DSE). Then DRMSE, which creates evaluating facility control programs while mixing and synchronizing real equipment and virtual factory models before real factories are implemented, is proposed in detail. Production facilities simulators which simulate facility behaviours using signals and data from a real world, and a soft-wiring system which logically wire real world data and simulation world data on the production facilities simulator, are proposed in DRMSE. Finally work was carried out to evaluate the performance of cooperative work.

ORiN: open robot interface for the network - the standard and unified network interface for industrial robot applications

The main objective of ORiN project is the standardization of networking software used as API that provides standard methods for accessing robot system information based on technologies that have already been designed for information infrastructures that are commonly used in the PCs and telecommunication services. In this paper, we describe the objective of ORiN first, then the architecture and key technologies. The applications developed according to ORiN specification that have been tested during the International Robot Exhibition in Tokyo held in 2001 are reported. This paper concludes with the future plan about the ORiN consortium.

ENHANCED DISTRIBUTED-SIMULATION USING ORiN AND HLA

ABSTRACT Recent manufacturing industries face various problems caused by the shorter product life cycle, the higher demand for cost and quality, the more diversified customer needs and so on. In this situation, it is very important to shorten the lead-time of the manufacturing system construction. Therefore, the manufacturing simulation has been watched with keen interest. However it is used only for the design stage of the construction. It is not useful for the implementation stage because of a proprietary simulation language, a complex modelling, etc. Our goal is to develop a simulation environment which can be used easily throughout the manufacturing system life cycle. Our approach is based on a distributed architecture, ORiN and HLA. This simulation environment is composed of some manufacturing simulators, real FA devices in the factory, its emulators and so on. By distributing them into one simulation environment on the network, a large-scale simulation and a highly accurate simulation are achieved.

Enhancement of Versatility of the Agent Robot Operation Environment in the Physical Agent System -Proposal of Data Server Framework

There are many problems to make various robots cooperate with each other to provide services. We construct the environment that the various robots that can cooperate using individual function which is not premised to cooperate with each other. To construct this, we propose and demonstrate unification of network interface, unification of robot operation commands, improvement of adaptability to system of robot and improvement of reusing of service in the environment

Manufacturing Cell Simulation Environment for Automated Visual Inspection Using Robot First Report: Fundamental System

Recently the industries provide visual inspection processes in the plants for keeping and guaranteeing product quality. Many visual inspection processes are normally operated by the manual visual inspection. The results of the manual visual inspection are often unstable because the results are depended on the inspection worker skill. Currently the automated visual inspection technologies are getting more important to stably keep and guarantee product quality. Specially, the automated visual inspection technologies using robots attract the industries. The robot usually has several industrial cameras and LED lights on its hand. However based on our analysis for the typical implementation procedure of the automated visual inspection technologies using robots, the period to implement the inspection processes are usually very long. The reasons are that there are many adjustment activities in the real plant concurrently concerning the imaging conditions, the robot motion conditions, and the visual inspection conditions. In order to reduce the period to implement the automated visual inspection processes, it is very important to reduce the adjustment activates in the real plant. Therefore it is necessary to develop the simulation technologies to support the adjustment activates on the virtual beforehand. We focus on the manufacturing cell simulation environment for the automated visual inspection using robots. The manufacturing cell simulation environment which provides to support the above adjustments on the virtual even if the robot and the target product are not existed, is proposed and developed. In this paper, the manufacturing cell simulation environment to solve the problems is proposed. Seven requirements for the simulation environment are defined. The fundamental system with five functions to implement the simulation environment is proposed and implemented. Hypothetic fundamental case studies are carried out to confirm effective of our proposed manufacturing cell simulation environment.

Simulation Model Driven Engineering for Manufacturing Cell

In our research, the simulation model driven engineering for manufacturing cell (SMDE-MC) is proposed. The purposes of SMDE-MC are to support the manufacturing engineering processes based on the simulation model and to extend the range of control applications and simulation applications using the PC based control. SMDE-MC provides the simulation model which controls and monitors the manufacturing cell directly using PC based control in the manufacturing system execution phase. Then when the simulation model acts in response to its behaviors, the manufacturing system is controlled by synchronizing the simulation model behaviors. In the manufacturing system implementation phase, the simulation model is mixed and synchronized with real equipment, real controllers, and management applications under a condition where parts of equipment, control programs, and manufacturing management applications are not provided in a manufacturing system.

DISTRIBUTED SIMULATION ENVIRONMENT TO EVALUATE MANUFCTURING SYSTEMS ALONG ENGINEERING PROCESSES

Abstract In this paper, a distributed simulation environment (DSE) to evaluate manufacturing systems along engineering processes is proposed. DSE realizes synchronizing manufacturing system simulators at a design stage, our past developed simulation environment which can simulate facility behaviours while synchronizing virtual factory models and real controller equipments at an implementation stage, and operational applications at a manufacturing system execution stage such as operation management systems. Specially the ORiN-HLA gateway in DSE to combine two different standard network architectures as HLA and ORiN is proposed and developed. Using DSE, ranges of evaluation items on computers along engineering processes are significantly extensible.