ABSTRACT: With the advent of precast construction technology, the construction industry has seen a rapid change in the way structures are built. Precast construction has brought down project costs and durations, increased the predictability and improved the quality of construction. It has also resulted in a shift in construction tasks from the construction site to the factory floor. Precast ele...

Our environment contains many physical processes that should be observed and/or controlled. Examples include climate control in intelligent buildings, factory floor automation and environmental control. These tasks require many individual sensors and actuators, which today are connected into fixed, wired networks. However, planning, installing and maintaining such a system is prohibitively comp...

Our environment contains many physical processes that should be observed and/or controlled. Examples include climate control in intelligent buildings, factory floor automation and environmental control. These tasks require many individual sensors and actuators, which today are connected into fixed, wired networks. However, planning, installing and maintaining such a system is prohibitively comp...

Robotization and automation of a construction process requires engineering approaches different from those that are applicable in factory automation. Construction site differs from industrial plant in scale of operation, mobility, type of processes and the work environment. A greater intelligence, load, and force range Is needed for a construction robot. The main reasons for using robots in con...

Within the framework of the German Government’s High-Tech strategy, the Industry 4.0 initiative was created, aiming to develop the “Smart Factory”. The approach assumes increased automation and a transparent, user-centred Production Planning and Scheduling. The “intelligent components” communicate with people and systems independently and find the optimal route through production.

Nowadays, a new generation of responsive factories is needed to face continuous changes in product demand and variety, and to manage complex and variant production processes. To such an aim, self-adaptive automation solutions are required, capable to adapt their control strategy in real-time to cope with planned as well as unforeseen product and process variations. In such a context, the presen...

Industrial automation applications across all segments—from factory, machine, and process automation to energy generation, distribution, and transportation—require an increasing amount of safety-enabled equipment. This white paper explores a case study on industrial system on a chip (SoC)—a drive on a chip—to explain how engineers can save up to 18 months of design time in achieving product cer...

The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is cited as the latest means for making manufacturing more flexible, cost effective, and responsive to changes in customer demands. However, a major concern surrounding the IIoT is interoperability between devices and machines that function within different protocols and architectures. This paper presents the Smart Factory Web (SFW), which is based on th...

In the context of the 4 industrial revolution, the knowledge and management of the precise topological and geographical location of industrial equipment is a growing necessity. However, a holistic concept for topology and location management in processand factory automation networks down to the field level is yet unknown. In this work, existing network and location management mechanisms are sur...