INDUSTRY 4 . 0 : LEGACY DEVICES INTEGRATION WITH OPC UA AND THE DIGITAL TWIN

Cavalcanti, Marcella Barros de Brito

http://hdl.handle.net/10400.8/9718

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Authors

Cavalcanti, Marcella Barros de Brito

Advisor(s)

Castro, Hugo Filipe Costelha de

Neves, Carlos Fernando Couceiro de Sousa

Abstract(s)

Over the years, the constant evolution of the industry has led to many advancements in factories and manufacturing systems. The terms "Smart Factories" and "Smart Manufacturing Systems" have been used to describe the latest wave of technological innovations that have transformed how factories operate. One of these innovations is the concept of the Digital Twin, which is a realistic virtual copy of a physical object. This technology allows entire manufacturing shop-floors to be digitalized, and physical processes to be tightly intertwined with their cyber counterparts. The development of Digital Twins encompasses several challenges, including model accuracy, security, and the integration of different devices and systems, including interoperability and standardization across them. The goal of this work is to develop key applications to support the implementation of Digital Twins in a Smart Factory environment, by describing an example of the development of an Industry 4.0 enabling application for a legacy device, as well as the design of a Digital Twin for a real industrial system from the ground up. A key result of this work is a successful use case of creating a Digital Twin for a quality control cell in the industry, using RobotStudio as the simulation environment and OPC UA as the communication protocol between the devices in the cell. The developed Digital Twin is capable of simulating the behaviour of the devices in the cell, as well as performing the cell’s control logic. It is also capable of storing historical process data, which could be analyzed and used to perform process optimization. Another relevant result is related to the use of a device’s Digital Twin to support the development of an application, performing tests and validation, while eliminating the need of accessing the real device. It shows that this technology can be used to speed up development and reduce downtime of industrial devices, thus reducing costs and improving the production process.