Creative integration of smarter machines with new emerging information and communication technologies in manufacturing industry allows collaborative automation between machines and promises greater production flexibility and product variability. The ubiquitous machine-to-machine messaging, intermachine understanding, and system modeling are key enabling techniques to empower machine interoperability for flexible manufacturing systems. However, the heterogeneities in machine part platforms, production strategies, and product variability keep the rich sensing and communication-intensive subsystems from seamless integration. By highlighting the specificities of industrial networks, this investigation aims to gain manufacturing flexibility by constructing a collaborative-automation-based industrial network from the system and software perspective, focusing on: 1) the modeling of machine interactions in communication-intensive industrial networks; 2) machine modularization and decentralized structure for production-line-scale efficiency; 3) ubiquitous messaging and understanding for machine interoperability; and 4) model-based management for application-level adaptation and flexibility. The presented technical solutions have been implemented in the PickNPack food manufacturing line, and the results demonstrate their feasibility.

中文翻译：

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为柔性制造设计无处不在的通信和基于协作自动化的机器网络系统

将智能机器与制造业中新兴的信息和通信技术进行创造性的集成，可以实现机器之间的协作自动化，并有望提高生产灵活性和产品可变性。普遍存在的机器对机器消息传递，机器间理解和系统建模是使柔性制造系统能够实现机器互操作性的关键启用技术。但是，机器零件平台，生产策略和产品可变性的异质性使丰富的传感和通信密集型子系统无法实现无缝集成。通过强调工业网络的特殊性，本研究旨在通过从系统和软件的角度构建基于协作自动化的工业网络来获得制造灵活性，着重于：1）通信密集型工业网络中机器交互的建模；2）机器模块化和分散式结构，以提高生产线规模的效率；3）无处不在的消息传递和对机器互操作性的理解；和4）基于模型的管理，以实现应用程序级别的适应性和灵活性。提出的技术解决方案已在PickNPack食品生产线中实施，结果证明了它们的可行性。