Development of a modular, intelligent and distributed Digital Twin architecture towards zero defects manufacturing

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Publications

IoT-based solution to reduce waste and promote a sustainable farming industry

Publication . Stefanuto, Bruno; Funchal, Gustavo Silva; Melo, Victoria; Mendes, Andre C.; Raimundo, Délio; Gouveia, Hélia; Coelho, João Paulo; Leitão, Paulo

Waste and the necessity to increase sustainability in the farming industry are some of the challenges addressed in the agri-food chain. With the potential of digital technologies, e.g., the Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence, to revolutionize agriculture by enabling more efficient and intelligent monitoring, system architecture and IoT nodes were developed to support relevant parameters for composing a Sustainability Index for the Bio-economy (siBIO). These nodes are scalable, modular, capable of meeting on-demand production needs, and provide a cost-effective alternative to commercial solutions or manual data collection methods. The collected data is transmitted to middleware and then stored, analyzed, and displayed on a user-friendly dashboard, providing data to siBIO and consequently contributing to a more sustainable farming industry and reducing waste of resources and food. The results include the implementation of IoT nodes in a case study involving a vineyard and an apple orchard. The nodes are successfully collecting data on environmental, operational, and energy parameters such as temperature, air humidity, soil moisture, precipitation, and water and electricity consumption for irrigation. The tests of data transmission and collection, functionality and robustness of the proposed solution were promising, offering a way to quantify the sustainability index and facilitate the exchange of agricultural information in a reliable and standardized way.

2023Conference object

Open access

Exploring digital twin dynamics: an analysis of structure configurations

Publication . Melo, Victoria; Barbosa, José; Pires, Flávia; Prieta Pintado, Fernando De la; Leitão, Paulo

Digital twin (DT) is an important technology to support the realization of the digital transformation, connecting the physical asset to its virtual copy and fostering real-time monitoring, simulation, and decision-support. However, the benefits of DT depend on its intended purpose and application, which is impacted by the design structure configuration that is used for its implementation. This paper discusses the advantages and challenges of considering different organizational structures for the implementation of DTs, namely centralised, hierarchical and decentralised, complemented with a case study that was used to analyse the implementation of DT focusing on centralised and decentralised approaches. Additionally, the paper includes an analysis of the main aspects of DT structures and their design guidelines, the key enabling technologies and the main challenges of distributing DTs.

2024Journal article

Open access

Positioning Cyber-Physical Systems and Digital Twins in Industry 4.0

Publication . Pires, Flávia; Melo, Victoria; Queiroz, Jonas; Moreira, António Paulo G. M.; Prieta Pintado, Fernando De la; Estevez, Elisabet; Leitão, Paulo

Industry 4.0 has brought innovative concepts and technologies that have greatly improved the development of more intelligent, flexible and reconfigurable systems. Two of these concepts, Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) and Digital Twins (DTs), have gained significant attention from various stakeholders, e.g., researchers, industry practitioners, and governmental organizations. Both are vital to support the digitalisation of products, machines, and systems, and they focus on the integration of physical and cyber processes, where one affects the other through feedback loops. Having this in mind, this paper aims to better understand how CPS and DT are correlated, particularly exploring their similarities and differences, their positioning within the Industry 4.0 paradigm, and their convergence to develop Industry 4.0 solutions. Some research challenges to develop Industry 4.0 solutions by integrating these concepts are also discussed.

2024Conference object

Open access

An intrusion detection system dataset for a multi-agent cyber-physical conveyor system

Publication . Funchal, Gustavo Silva; Zahid, Farzana; Melo, Victoria; Kuo, Matthew M.Y.; Pedrosa, Tiago; Sinha, Roopak; Prieta Pintado, Fernando De la; Leitão, Paulo

Industry 4.0 is built upon the foundation of connecting devices and systems via Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, with Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) serving as the backbone infrastructure. Although this approach brings numerous benefits like improved performance, responsiveness and reconfigurability, it also introduces security concerns, making devices and systems vulnerable to cyber attacks. There is a need for effective techniques to protect these systems, and the availability of datasets becomes essential to support the development of such techniques. This paper presents a dataset based on the collection of traffic information exchanged in a self-organizing conveyor system using the multi-agent systems (MAS) architecture and containing various intelligent conveyor modules. The dataset comprises data collected at the network and agent levels under normal system operation, denial of service (DoS) attacks, and malicious agent attacks. An intrusion detection system that integrates Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) and Machine Learning (ML) analysis is developed to demonstrate the utility of this dataset.

2023Conference object

Restricted access