Browsing by Author "Sakurada, Lucas"
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- Agent-based asset administration shell approach for digitizing industrial assetsPublication . Sakurada, Lucas; Leitão, Paulo; Prieta Pintado, Fernando De laModern manufacturing systems are facing new challenges related to the fast-changing market conditions, increased global competition and rapid technological developments, imposing strong requirements in terms of flexibility, robustness and reconfigurability. In this context, the Industry 4.0 (I4.0) paradigm relies on digitizing industrial assets to fulfil these requirements. The implementation of this digitization process is being promoted by the so-called Asset Administration Shell (AAS), a digital representation of an asset that complies with standardization and interoperability strategies. At this moment, a significant part of the AAS developments is more focused on the information management of the asset along its lifecycle and not concerned with aspects of intelligence and collaboration, which are fundamental aspects to develop I4.0 compliant solutions. In this sense, this paper presents an agent-based AAS approach for enhancing the digitization process of assets, considering agents to embed distributed intelligence and collaborative functions, service orientation to support interoperability, and holonic principles to provide the system organization. The proposed agent-based AAS was implemented in an industrial automation system aiming to analyze its applicability.
- Analysis of new job profiles for the factory of the futurePublication . Geraldes, Carla A.S.; Sakurada, Lucas; Fernandes, Florbela P.; Pontes, Joseane; Leitão, PauloIndustry 4.0 is being promoting the digitisation of manufacturing sector towards smart products, machines, processes and factories. The adoption of disruptive technologies associated to this industrial revolution will lead to re-shaping the manufacturing environment, decreasing the low-skilled activities and increasing the high-skill activities, being expected to grow the complexity and number of new job profiles. In this context, this paper aims to analyse the literature and recruitment repositories to identify the new job profiles in the factory of the future (FoF) across six industrial technological sectors, namely Collaborative Robotics (Cobots), Additive Manufacturing (AM), Mechatronics and Machine Automation (MMA), Data Analytics (DA), Cybersecurity (CS) and Human-Machine Interface (HMI). The performed analysis allowed to compile a catalogue of 100 new job profiles that were characterised and analysed in terms of technical and soft skills, type and level of profile, as well as the frequency demand.
- Co-design process for upskilling the workforce in the factories of the futurePublication . Geraldes, Carla A.S.; Fernandes, Florbela P.; Sakurada, Lucas; Rasmussen, Ann Lilith; Bennyson, Rene; Pellegri, Umberto; Leitão, PauloThe digital transformation that the world is facing has a strong impact in the professional occupations and job profiles in the factories of the future context, requiring the need of upskilling and re-qualification of the workforce. Taking this into account, an Industrial Collaborative Educational Design (ICoED) is presented comprising three stages and eight steps, and considering a democratic and collaborative participation of the different stakeholders, namely the managers, educators and learners, each one providing its own perspective on the design of the training programme. In this co-design process, the analysis of the skills’ gap is a crucial task to prepare the initial stage of the process, particularly identifying the needs in terms of soft and hard skills. The proposed ICoED process was applied to solve an upskilling problem of an industrial metal stamping company, with the participants performing three workshops to execute the eight steps, reaching a training programme with five modules, each one settled with proper activities, resources and infrastructures.
- Collective intelligence in self-organized industrial cyber-physical systemsPublication . Sakurada, Lucas; Leitão, Paulo; Queiroz, JonasCyber-physical systems (CPS) play an important role in the implementation of new Industry 4.0 solutions, acting as the backbone infrastructure to host distributed intelligence capabilities and promote the collective intelligence that emerges from the interactions among individuals. This collective intelligence concept provides an alternative way to design complex systems with several benefits, such as modularity, flexibility, robustness, and reconfigurability to condition changes, but it also presents several challenges to be managed (e.g., non-linearity, self-organization, and myopia). With this in mind, this paper discusses the factors that characterize collective intelligence, particularly that associated with industrial CPS, analyzing the enabling concepts, technologies, and application sectors, and providing an illustrative example of its application in an automotive assembly line. The main contribution of the paper focuses on a comprehensive review and analysis of the main aspects, challenges, and research opportunities to be considered for implementing collective intelligence in industrial CPS. The identified challenges are clustered according to five different categories, namely decentralization, emergency, intelligent machines and products, infrastructures and methods, and human integration and ethics. Although the research indicates some potential benefits of using collective intelligence to achieve the desired levels of autonomy and dynamic adaptation of industrial CPS, such approaches are still in the early stages, with perspectives to increase in the coming years. Based on that, they need to be further developed considering some main aspects, for example, related to balancing the distribution of intelligence by the vertical and horizontal dimensions and controlling the nervousness in self-organized systems.
- Deployment of industrial agents in a smart parking systemPublication . Sakurada, Lucas; Barbosa, José; Leitão, PauloIn recent years, the intense urbanization, and consequently the traffic congestion, has been a major concern of large cities. In this context, the development of smart parkings is a suitable solution to deal with this problem. However, the complexity and requirements imposed by such large-scale systems are an obstacle to its easy implementation. In this sense, it is fundamental to adopt emergent ICT and Artificial Intelligence technologies that are capable to address the imposed requirements. Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) is a suitable approach to face this challenge by providing modularity, flexibility, reconfigurability and fast response to condition change based on its decentralized nature. The use of such agent-based solutions to control physical assets, create novel systems entitled Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) where the interconnection between the cyber and the physical parts is a crucial issue. This paper focuses the interface between the software agents of a smart parking system with the physical control devices of the parking spots. For this purpose, different interface practices were implemented and tested, considering different interaction schemes and technologies. These alternative interface practices were analyzed taking into consideration the response time, scalability and re-usability parameters.
- Development of agent-based CPS for smart parking systemsPublication . Sakurada, Lucas; Barbosa, José; Leitão, Paulo; Alves, Gleifer; Borges, André; Botelho, PedroThe increase volume of vehicles circulating in large cities and the limited space for parking are factors that motivate the adoption of systems capable of dealing with such problems. In this context, smart parking systems are suitable solutions to avoid the traffic congestion, the air pollution and the long search to find a free parking spot. The inclusion of emergent ICT technologies and artificial intelligence techniques, and particularly using multi-agent systems, combined under the scope of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), ensure flexibility, modularity, adaptability and the decentralization of intelligence through autonomous, cooperative and proactive entities. Such smart parking systems can be easily adapted to any type of vehicle to be parked and scalable in terms of the number of parking spots and drivers/vehicles. A fundamental issue in these agent-based CPS parking systems is the interconnection between the cyber and physical counterparts, i.e. between the software agents and the physical asset controllers to access the parking spots. This paper focuses on developing an agent-based CPS for a smart parking system and particularly addressing how the software agents are interconnected with the physical asset controllers using proper Internet of Things technologies. The proposed approach was implemented in two distinct parking systems, one for bicycles and another for cars, showing an efficient, modular, adaptable and scalable operation.
- Development of industrial agents in a smart parking system for bicyclesPublication . Sakurada, Lucas; Leitão, Paulo; Barbosa, José; Neli, Roberto RibeiroSmart parking systems are a suitable solution to avoid some recurring problems in large cities, such as traffic congestion and air pollution. These systems aim to guide in real time the driver to find free parking spots, in the shortest time possible and as close as possible to the desired location. In this sense, such smart parking constitutes a Cyber-Physical System (CPS) and requires the use of appropriate Internet of Things (IoT) technologies and Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques, such as Multi-Agent System (MAS), that allow the incorporation of intelligence into the CPS through autonomous, proactive and cooperative entities. This work presents the development of an agent-based CPS for parking of bicycles, where the interface between the software agents and the low-level control devices plays a fundamental role in the global functioning of the system. For this purpose, different interface practices were implemented and tested to determine which best fits for the current application. Based on the results obtained, an agent-based CPS was implemented, showing an efficient, modular, adaptable and scalable operation.
- Digitization of industrial environments through an industry 4.0 compliant approachPublication . Sakurada, Lucas; Prieta Pintado, Fernando De la; Leitão, PauloAbout a decade after the introduction of Industry 4.0 (I4.0) as a paradigm oriented towards the digitization of industrial environments, centered on the concept of industrial Cyber-physical Systems (CPS) to enable the development of intelligent and distributed industrial systems, many companies around the world are still not immersed in this digital transformation era. This transition is not straightforward and requires the aligned with the novel technologies, architectures and standards to migrate entire traditional systems into I4.0 systems. In this context, this paper presents an approach to perform the digitization of non-I4.0 components/systems into I4.0 through an approach based on the Asset Administration Shell (AAS), which is a standardized digital representation of an asset. This approach enables to hold the asset information throughout its lifecycle, provides a standard communication interface with the asset, and is based on a set of modules that are combined with the AAS to provide novel functionalities for the asset, e.g., monitoring, diagnosis and optimization. Moreover, this approach adopts Multi-agent Systems (MAS) to provide mainly autonomy and collaborative capabilities to the system. The agents are able to get information from the AASs, making intelligent decisions and perform distributed tasks following interaction strategies, e.g., collaboration, negotiation and self-organization. The feasibility of the proposed approach was tested by digitizing a small-scale production system comprising several assets.
- Engineering a multi-agent systems approach for realizing collaborative asset administration shellsPublication . Leitão, Paulo; Sakurada, Lucas; Prieta Pintado, Fernando De laIn recent years, there has been a high demand for flexible and reconfigurable processes to meet the fast-changing market conditions. In this context, Industry 4.0 is promoting the digitization of traditional production systems towards intelligent factories with highly automated and rapidly adaptable capabilities based on Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems (ICPS). This digitization process is currently being leveraged by the so-called Asset Administration Shell (AAS), a standardized digital representation of an asset that provides the uniform access to the asset information. Additionally, the AASs offer the digital basis for future autonomous systems, where intelligent AASs may perform collaborative functions to enhance industrial processes. However, currently such solutions are still at an early stage of maturity. In this sense, this paper explores the adoption of a Multi-agent Systems (MAS) approach to provide the required intelligent and collaborative aspects for the traditional AAS. The proposed MAS-based AAS solution was applied in an industrial automation case study to analyze the feasibility of MAS to perform intelligent and collaborative functions in the AAS context.
- Integrating a multi-agent smart parking system using cloud technologiesPublication . Boos Junior, Milton; Leitão, Paulo; Sakurada, Lucas; Alves, Paulo; Alves, Gleifer; Borges, André; Antunes, DiegoSmart parking (SP) systems are becoming a solution to address the increasing traffic in major cities, which are related to the traffic congestion, unnecessary time spent searching for parking spots, and, consequently, environmental issues. These systems intend to help drivers that are searching for available parking spaces in a given desired location. This paper presents a cloud-based solution to integrate a Multi-Agent System (MAS) for SP, which enables the modularization, scalability and robustness of such large-scale systems. The MAS abstraction is a suitable approach to represent the dynamic features of a SP, where multiple drivers arrive, request, search, and leave the parking spots. The cloud services enable to scale up the use of a MAS, being an intermediary in the communication between the MAS and the end user, providing a broad architecture that involves database, asynchronous functions activated by events and real-time message exchange. The cloud agent-based system was depl oyed in the parking of an University campus, where users driving bicycles and cars can request and schedule parking slots that are managed in a distributed manner by the MAS. The obtained results show the user friendly interaction with the system, the scalability of the system in terms of drivers and parking spots, as well as the efficient management of the parking spots by the MAS system.