Integration of Digital Twin with UR and AMR for Real-Time Adaptive Material Handling Systems

Traditional manufacturing systems were static, rigid and disconnected and they were designed for mass production with low flexibility. Those systems had predefined schedules and fixed processing speed. Therefore, they were not able to adapt in real time data which leads to unbalanced workflows, excess inventory. With the fourth industrial revolution, new manufacturing systems, especially Smart Manufacturing systems, can respond fast to global competitiveness and customization. Smart manufacturing systems gather real-time data with improvement in decision making, increasing efficiency and performance and total production. By emerging Digital Twin, it is considered as a core component in smart manufacturing. Digital Twin through the virtual component of physical assets, is updating the systems based on real-time data. As smart manufacturing needs quick decision based on real-time data, digital twin enables this process and makes the manufacturing process more reactive and smarter. However, in the real world, the capacity of the warehouses is limited and imbalances between workstations and warehouses can create bottlenecks and disrupt the production flow. Therefore, Having the synchronization between warehouse capacity and workstations is necessary to have stable manufacturing process. Increasing the speed of robotic systems in workstations does not always guarantee better performance as it causes congestion, so it is important to keep the processing speed of the processing and warehouse availability balanced and prevent blocking or overflow. The proposed solution is to integrate a digital twin framework to adjust the speed of the robot manipulator with respect to the limited capacity of the warehouse. This study is done in Mind4Lab at Politecnico di Torino by utilizing FlexSim simulation software, a UR3e collaborative robot for picking and place application, a mobile robot MiR100 for moving the items to a warehouse and the Modbus communication protocol for exchanging data between physical and digital components.