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SUMMARY
In modern industrial practice, production lines are adjusted or relocated frequently in order to meet the requirements of a market where limited series and multiple models demand ever more flexible machinery and techniques. Wired communication and connections between discrete components of the production line entails that any adjusting or relocating will be costly, time-consuming, and unnecessarily constrained to certain physical configurations.
Wireless connections offer a better solution, in this light. But wireless systems have their own constraints imposed by the industrial environment and they must meet high standards of stability, robustness and responsiveness, and machines, containers, reflective materials, and other commonplace factory objects, can disrupt wireless communication.
The FORWARD project seeks to develop and integrate flexible wireless solutions for industrial applications. These solutions should contribute to efficient wireless communication between production components and increased levels of automation in the factories of the future. The proposed innovations and technologies will be brought together in an end-to-end system.
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SOLUTIONS
- Developing wireless solutions for more flexible, cheaper, and more automated production lines
- Basing the constitutive software on realistic models and measurements derived from the factories of the project partners.
- Enhancing the technology output with hardware and software for scanning, checking and generating data traffic during the roll-out of a network so that real-time insight will make it possible to anticipate potential problems at an early stage.
- Ensuring, through regular monitoring and real-time adjustments, that deployed industrial networks continue to perform optimally irrespective of the changing environmental conditions
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LINK: http://www.iminds.be/en/projects/2014/03/20/forward
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