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Design and modification of human-robot collaboration workspace requires analysis of the safety of systems. Generally, the safety analysis process of a system commences with conducting a risk assessment. There exists a number international standards for design robotics work cells and collaborative shared workspaces. These guidelines expound on principles and measures to identify hazards and reduce risks. Measures of risk reductions include eliminating hazards by design, safeguarding, and providing supplementary protective measures such as user training. This study analyzed the technical feasibility and industrial readiness of Virtual Reality (VR) technology for safety training in manufacturing sector. The test case of a VR-based safety training application is defined in the human-robot collaboration pilot-line of diesel engines. The Analytic Hierarchy Process method was utilized for conducting a quantitative analysis of the survey with ten experts. The participants performed the importance rating with respect to two hierarchy level criteria. Regarding the evaluation of safety training methods in a human-robot collaboration environment, two alternatives of traditional and Virtual Reality -based training are compared. The results indicates that the VR-based training is valued over the traditional method, with a scored proportion of approximately 65 percent over 35 percent.

Circular economy refers to the intention to overcome the problems in the current production and consumption model. The current model is based on continuous growth and an increasing efficient resource utilization among the industry. Within the circular economy, an organizations are expected to minimize material and energy use, and by design and action reduce the environmental deterioration without restricting economic growth or social and technical progress. This development has been undertaken in many industries, especially in consumer-related businesses, many examples are well documented. However, there are only few studies available concerning the current circular economy activities in the manufacturing industry or their potential. The main goal of this paper is to identify and validate the circular economy readiness between communication and actual action in the circular economy business in manufacturing companies in a regional context. The results of this study will show the capabilities of the manufacturing industry to do business in regional circular economy activities. Two conclusions can be made. Firstly, the results of regional circular economy activities bring valuable information for academics, policymakers, and manufacturing companies. Secondly, the regional baseline of the circular economy can help highlight the current situation and identify the business areas which the next actions should be targeted at.

The aim of the paper is to review the trends on low-cost open-source Internet of Thing (IoT) in the Framework of Industry 4.0. We hypothesize that open source IoTs benefits small and medium sized (SME) manufacturing companies to help them tackle economical and technical barriers for technology adoption at factory floors. This research reviews the state of the art of open-source hardware and software and identifies the challenges of open-source IoT by compiling scientific literature and relevant online resources. The methodology is twofold: (i) we use a grey literature review including online information, and (ii) we complement the analysis by a structured keyword search using IEEE scientific repository. The study finds that open source is and will be an essential part of developing Industry 4.0 solutions and its integral constituent, Industrial Internet of Things systems (IIoT). However, there are challenges to overcome, such as interoperability and reliability. publishedVersion

Interoperability is one of the biggest challenges in IoT. There is a need to connect tools and services from different platforms to improve performance and flexibility as well as to get rid of vendor-locks. Moreover, fully established practices to classify IoT systems to support the development of multi-platform systems have not been grounded. This paper addresses these issues on a two-fold approach. Firstly, by introducing a classification that is based on the tasks performed in IoT system. Secondly by proposing a conceptual middleware to connect different IoT platforms as for a possible solution for interoperability issues in IoT. publishedVersion

As companies in the manufacturing sector are starting to incorporate circular economy targets in their strategies, they need to understand what capabilities and circular engineering solutions they should develop and implement, including their likely impact on the company performance. Based on survey data from manufacturing companies operating in Germany (N=111) collected in December 2021/January 2022, we pre-sent how the perceived level of circular economy, via the implementation of circularity into operations, products and services, influences the company’s perceived competitiveness on the level of product/service innovativeness. The results indicate that employees in the companies perceive that the level of circular economy implementation (i.e., implementing circularity into operations, products and services) has a sig-nificant influence on the perceived product/service innova-tiveness and perceived competitiveness of companies that have already incorporated circular economy into their strategy. Furthermore, the data indicate that fostering a circular econ-omy-oriented business culture alone is no longer enough for ensuring competitiveness. acceptedVersion

Reconfigurable Pilot Lines (RPLs) are one practical concept for implementing the test-before-invest strategy to improve skills and capabilities of European small and medium enterprises (SMEs). SMEs typically have limited resources for systematically exploring the potential benefits of available technologies. By utilizing the RPLs offered by research institutes and universities, companies can get both commercially uncommitted and realistic proof-of-concept studies for their applications, and valuable information about the skills and personnel competences needed for successful implementation of the new technologies. Test-before-invest services offered by RPLs can also foster the process of adopting new digital technologies in manufacturing industry. RPLs are versatile. RPL can act as a test bed for manufacturing company's investment study, industry-scale product development laboratory for technology provider, as well as a platform for scientific research and education. Due to versatile roles and functions, defining pilot line requirements specifications call for systematic contribution from both industry and academia. This paper introduces a collaborative approach for defining requirements specifications for RPLs from the future technology skills development perspective. As a basis for this research, we combine results of three joined industry-academia workshops and one academic workshop with total 87 participants utilizing Affinity Wall method. This data was supplemented with an online survey for 74 companies from manufacturing industry. The analysis indicates that defining requirements specifications and development roadmaps for RPLs is a complex process, requiring multidisciplinary collaboration. Based on the analysis, a conceptual model supporting the requirements specification work is proposed in this paper. The model was applied to an existing testbed environment for further evaluation.

Customized product requirements are driving the need for variety oriented assemblies even in collaborative environments between humans and robots. This calls for the need for robots and humans to be intelligent in order to be aware of and adapt to different product needs. To address this, this study presents a novel approach and architecture to realize a digital thread that allows human and robot agents access to the product model at system run-time. The approach entails modelling a knowledge-based engineering (KBE) software as an agent which actively participates with collaborative agents via communication mechanisms standardized by the IEEE Computer Society. The architecture is described by four concurrent views and is discussed for its advantages and design rationale. acceptedVersion

This paper presents interactive learning activities on both individual exercises and course implementations. The main objective is to enrich the education of production engineering both on bachelor and master level studies. The learning activities are focused on the order-to-delivery process on a factory floor as well as the related planning and scheduling tasks. The theoretical topics of the education are explained as a base for the topics of the learning activities. The core of the learning activities is a simulation model and several exercises are conducted using the simulation environment. Additional activities are added to the simulation environment to bring interactive elements to individual exercises. Similarly, the interaction elements in the course implementations are discussed. These topics are elaborated from the viewpoints of the current education and possibilities for the future development. publishedVersion

Lean manufacturing is commonly agreed as efficient and competitive performance towards which all manufacturing companies desire to develop their operations. Literature largely supports this with numerous case studies on various industries and fields, from manufacturing to services and health business. However, among manufacturing companies of complex products, produced in small batch sizes in high cost countries, most of the companies have either not achieved lean performance or have only partially benefited from it. There is lack of sufficient descriptions and measures on how companies, other than mass producers, could achieve and sustain leanness holistically. To address this gap, this paper introduces a lean manufacturing reference framework situated in the small batch size manufacturing, which emphasises integrated product and production development, and contingent factors to better align with the demands of manufacturers. The framework is constructed based on literature review and then validated with Sustainability and Key Performance Indicators Landscape. publishedVersion

Funding Information: This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 825196. Publisher Copyright: © 2021 The Author(s) Robot grasping and manipulation require estimation of 3D object poses. Recently, a number of methods and datasets for vision-based pose estimation have been proposed. However, it is unclear how well the performance measures developed for visual pose estimation predict success in robot manipulation. In this work, we introduce an approach that connects error in pose and success in robot manipulation, and propose a probabilistic performance measure of the task success rate. A physical setup is needed to estimate the probability densities from real world samples, but evaluation of pose estimation methods is offline using captured test images, ground truth poses and the estimated densities. We validate the approach with four industrial manipulation tasks and evaluate a number of publicly available pose estimation methods. The popular pose estimation performance measure, Average Distance of Corresponding model points (ADC), does not offer any quantitatively meaningful indication of the frequency of success in robotmanipulation. Our measure is instead quantitatively informative: e.g., a score of 0.24 corresponds to average success probability of 24%.

Part 2: Assembly Design and Planning; International audience; This paper presents a case study for capability matchmaking method and specifically focuses on interface matchmaking process. This method can be utilised during production system design or reconfiguration by system integrators or end users. They will benefit from fast and automatic resource searches over large resource catalogues. The paper binds together the process around the capability and interface matchmaking, which are presented more in detail in our earlier publications. In this paper, the use of matchmaking process is exemplified, and a verification of the method is provided with two test cases.

Traditionally, the production system design and reconfiguration planning are manual processes, which rely heavily on the designers’ expertise and tacit knowledge to find feasible system configuration solutions. Rapid responsiveness of future production systems calls for new computer-aided intelligent design and planning solutions, that would reduce the time and effort put into system design, both in brownfield and greenfield scenarios. This paper describes the implementation of a capability matchmaking software, which automatizes the matchmaking between product requirements and resource capabilities. The interaction of the matchmaking system with external design and planning tools is explained and illustrated with a case example. The matchmaking approach supports production system design and reconfiguration planning by providing automatic means for checking if the existing system already fulfills the new product requirements, and for finding alternative resources and resource combinations to specific product requirements from large search spaces, e.g. from global resource catalogues. publishedVersion

Part 4: Assembly Cells and Systems; International audience; The European manufacturers are dealing with shorter product life-cycles and smaller batch sizes. Especially, the high-value products tend to be fully personalised, which makes the automatisation of the production difficult. However, the trend is that the production needs to be predictable and fully traceable to the process and even to the tool level. This adds pressure to have better data collection methods and also to increase of automation in different levels of production. The emergence of new technologies in the field of robotics allows the utilisation of automation in flexible manner. Within all areas of robotics, the demand for collaborative systems is rising as well. The level of desired collaboration and increased flexibility will only be reached if the systems are developed as whole e.g. perception, reasoning and physical manipulation. However, at the same time there is concerns on how to attract capable personnel to the factories. In order to fully implement and utilise the new robotics technologies the industry needs capable resources. For answering these needs there has been several attempts to build different types of industrial ecosystems to facilitate better the technology and knowledge transfer, and share of expertise. The main aim of the paper is to review recent actions regarding the robotics projects forming industrial ecosystems in the Horizon 2020 framework programme, and then introduce the TRINITY Digital Innovation Hub (DIH) project approach to form an industrial ecosystem in the field of robotics.

Global operations are accelerating the diffusion of technology and the pace of innovation. The increased demand for ICT and problem-solving skills requires new methods and tools to support continuous learning paradigm. The emergence of circular economy (CE) paradigm is demanding the companies to change and take broader role in the value chain. Within these new value-chains, the manufacturer plays central role re-designing products for multiple uses and proposing new consumption patterns to customers through innovative services covering the current and future life-cycles of the product. This new level of complexity and interconnection puts a pressure to the education system, which traditionally is highly focused on its own priority areas. The paper will present an approach to speed uptake of CE business potential by introducing an education module created in collaboration with industry and academia to support the creation of new talents in the field of manufacturing industry. publishedVersion

It is expected that by utilizing digital technologies, advanced robotics and artificial intelligence, the manufacturing base of Europe will become stronger and allow production re-shoring from other trade areas to take place. The European competitiveness is tied to better competences of the workforce and fast implementation of new technologies. This requires new approaches for formal and non-formal education. For this, we propose a new robotics learning concept and collaboration scheme to support both MSc level education, but also non-formal education with industry. The non-formal education example could be a combination of an education package followed by rapid experimenting with a robot system. In order to facilitate the learning process, we have established the Tampere RoboLab and joint academia-industry education modules for both formal and non-formal education. The Tampere RoboLab operates with similar principles as e.g. Fab Labs (fabrication laboratories), but the focus is on indoor stationary and mobile robotics. Aside from education, the concept allows system interoperability testing and pre-competitive research to be done in the same premises as well as field robotics by providing the state of art localisation and perception sensors, and computation and communication devices. This paper will introduce the concept, used hardware and software configurations, education modules and the forms of industry-academia collaboration. publishedVersion