Research

Automation Technology

 


The research sector A|PS deals with the manifold challenges of sustainable value adding networks. Our vision is the development of innovative solutions for autonomous manufacturing and the integration of novel digital business models. In doing so, we pursue defined goals:

  • Increasing the flexibility and adaptivity of production plants and systems in the context of global trends such as digitalization, artificial intelligence, mass customization and Batch Size 1, Traceability etc.
  • Development of self-describing, self-organizing, self-operating and self-optimizing systems
  • Transfer of research results by implementing functional models, integration and further development of our solutions together with partners from research and Industry

In order to achieve these goals, we strive for the further development of relevant technologies from the industrial as well as the consumer environment to implement modular, autonomous, where necessary self-sufficient and independently interacting production systems. An essential aspect is the service orientation in production and, above all, the technical advancement of existing production approaches and systems to create individual value-adding and production networks. The integration of people as decision-makers and the support of users in mastering system-inherent complexity permeates all research activities. The focus is on various technologies, architectures and design patterns from computer science and the Industrial Internet of Things and Services (IIoTS):

  • Wired and radio-based communication technologies for industrial (real-time) communication
  • Smart services and service-oriented architectures
  • Application of the methods of artificial intelligence and machine learning
  • Data Analytics for plant and process monitoring
  • Semantic interaction and ontologies for knowledge representation
  • Cloud based platform solutions

In order to define the focus more clearly, we group our research activities into long-term topics:

Due to the holistic view of the life cycle of production plants, there are strong synergies with the topics of the research area Engineering Systems (E|Sys), especially at the interfaces of integration and commissioning of production plants, but also in the feedback of findings from operation into engineering. In order to view automation projects in their entirety, joint research projects are also being worked on here and joint demonstrators are being set up.

Contact

Jonathan Fuchs, M. Sc.