BaSynaos - Intelligent merging of intralogistics and production in the factory of the future

Saarbruecken/Hanover, April 4, 2023 – After a two-year runtime, SYNAOS GmbH and DFKI successfully conclude the BaSynaos satellite project. In BaSynaos, the software company SYNAOS and the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence developed an online process planning for intralogistics and production in the basic system for Industry 4.0. BaSynaos started on March 1, 2021, and was funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) for a period of two years.

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A central aspect of adaptable production environments in Industry 4.0 is the intelligent merging of intralogistics and production processes as essential components of the value chain. Online planning systems require planning-relevant information from the shop floor before and during production, as well as suitable operational interfaces for real-time control of involved assets. Assets refer to network-capable components and objects that are involved in the value chain, such as machines, robots, and manufactured products.

In the BaSynaos project, suitable uniform interfaces were created for connecting external planning systems for logistics and production. For this purpose, the online planning software was connected to the basic system for Industry 4.0 in the form of the SYNAOS Intralogistics Management Platform (IMP). The project partners SYNAOS and DFKI were able to draw on the basic system developed in the predecessor project BaSys 4.0/4.2 (https://www.basys40.de), which provides a reference implementation of administration shells and guiding components.

In addition to the principle of guiding components for manufacturer-independent control of, for example, collaborative lightweight robots or mobile transport units, the basic system for Industry 4.0 also relies on uniform access to important information facets of assets through an administration shell. This technical realization of the digital twin of the production environment manages data, such as the technical specification of certain vehicle types, in standardized partial models. This includes information about the topology of the production facility, i.e., hierarchical relationships between production areas, manufacturing and logistics units, and storage areas.

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The implementation and evaluation took place in the "German-Czech Innovation Laboratory for Human-Robot Collaboration in Industry 4.0" at the DFKI in Saarbrücken. The jointly created, partially virtualized demonstrator could be successfully tested there.

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Andreas Luxenburger, BaSynaos project manager, DFKI research department for cognitive assistance systems: "Together with SYNAOS GmbH as an extremely dedicated and competent partner and expert in the field of intralogistics planning, we have succeeded for the first time in connecting an online planner to the basic system for Industry 4.0 and using it for orchestration of a partially simulated production process."

In the production process, administration shells of involved robots, products, and processes were used, through which the planner could continuously and in real-time obtain relevant information and adjust the planning accordingly. This included, for example, operating conditions, order situations, but also error conditions and unexpected events, which can often occur in the context of highly dynamic human-robot collaboration scenarios.

When controlling the robots using the principle of guiding components as a manufacturer-independent operational interface, it was important from the outset to use already established communication standards such as VDA5050 for mobile transport robots and integrate them accordingly in BaSys.

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Dr Philipp Schäfers, Chief of Staff at SYNAOS GmbH: "The communication standard VDA 5050 was a decisive factor for success in the BaSynaos project because without standardization, the intelligent, data-based linking of intralogistics and production processes as essential components of the value chain is hardly possible."

BaSynaos has created the foundation for efficient integration of industrial AI solutions in production environments, thereby making a significant contribution to reducing manual integration and commissioning efforts. The knowledge gained in the project can also be beneficial to other small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) through the publication of corresponding sub-model specifications as interfaces, as well as the open-source publication of essential software artifacts, which in turn are based on open-source frameworks increasingly used in the industrial context such as Apache Kafka.

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‍Contact

Andreas Luxenburger, M.Sc.

Research Area Cognitive Assistance Systems (Forschungsbereich Kognitive Assistenzsysteme)

E-mail: andreas.luxenburger@dfki.de

Tel.: +49 681 85775 2565

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For technical questions on the SYNAOS side:

Dr Philipp Schäfers

Chief of Staff, SYNAOS GmbH

E-mail: philipp.schaefers@synaos.com

Tel.: +49 172 47 20 095

https://www.synaos.com

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For media relations on the SYNAOS side:

Julian Borchert-al-Huribi

Content Writer, SYNAOS GmbH

E-mail: julian.borchert@synaos.com

Tel.: +49 173 20 68 716

https://synaos.com

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Website: https://www.dfki.de/web/forschung/projekte-publikationen/projekt/basynaos

YouTube: https://youtu.be/53q2Y9kMkFA