Better Factory attended the researchers’ corner of the ‘Curious Today, Partner Tomorrow’ robotics event. On the 2nd of November, the SDU robotics laboratories invited the robot industry and others interested in their work to listen and participate in a mix of presentations, lab tours and company visits, combined with networking and the opportunity to discuss ideas for the corporation.
The journey started with the SDU itself, talking about “Functionally Graded 3D/4D printing porous materials”, and the floor was from Alireza Daman Pak. He deeply explained what 4D Printing is: the 3D printing of smart materials.
Andrei Alexandru Popa followed with the presentation “New possibilities in 3D steel printing”. He received the audience in a lab suit next to a new metal 3D printer. Before the beginning, he showed some weird shapes they were trying to create with this machine. Afterwards, he could explain what was so intelligent about this printer: its ability to bring only numerical simulations to daylight. Further, he shared a few developments in metal printing, specifically in additive manufacturing and mechatronics.
The next panel was about “Application of robotics in production/assembly lines. Simplifying programming of force-controlled industrial tasks by learning from demonstration.” Professor Iñigo Iturrate and the principal innovation researcher Rune Soc-Knudsen were in charge of the presentation. They developed how they use programming by demonstration, which applies to specific tasks and reduces production time.
Afterwards, it was the turn of “Software technologies for exploiting production data” from Professor Mikkel Baun. He explained their data usage from different perspectives, such as automation systems, new software solutions to help manufacturing, data collection in augmented reality to help show data, and data-driven energy models in augmented reality.
Dr Tim van Erp in engineering operations management, talked about Industrial Digital Twins. This panel started sharing how the future will look in terms of their vision among industry 4.0. Digital twins will play a massive role in shaping digital ecosystems globally. They are a digital representation of a physical or nonphysical asset or process from the real world in the digital world. The speaker explained the digital twin asset administration shell (AAS) further and did a roadmap for the industrial digital twin.
The last talk in the researchers’ corner was “VR/AR Environment for Multi-Purpose industrial applications” with Professor Fei Yu. He highlighted the value of VR in industry and education and the use of VR for industrial training. Insisted in the opportunities that VR can create for all parties like career development of students, company solutions and insight experiences and virtual labs for engineering education at universities. To end up, they showed the research they are currently doing to the audience within a virtual lab.
Better Factory supplies technology for SMEs to become cyber-physical systems, transforming them into lean-agile production facilities capable of manufacturing new and personalized products along with existing ones. It participated in this event to learn more about this direction. ‘Curious today, partner tomorrow’ quoted it: “This particular event is a great way to learn about our research, meet students, companies and academic experts.”
