Markt&Technik: What tasks does the Resolto AI perform in the Festo controller and motor controller?

Tanja Krüger: Both devices can now be expanded with machine learning algorithms from Resolto and then offer intelligent process monitoring. At SPS IPC Drives, Festo and Resolto will be presenting their first joint AI solution for handling batteries to detect faulty ones. A handling portal lifts the batteries. The Resolto AI monitors the motor currents and position values of the axis in the controller. If anomalies occur, for example if the handling system picks up a battery that is too heavy or is empty, a message is generated and sent to the cloud via the Festo IoT gateway, which serves as the central monitoring instance. At Festo, the cloud is called "My Dashboards", while other manufacturers may use their own portal or SCADA interface to access the interpreted data from the AI via a REST (Representational State Transfer) interface.

We are presenting this AI solution as a first example of the new generation of industrial AI, which interprets data directly at the machine and will provide manufacturers and operators with significantly more transparency in the future.

Are there already other joint use cases?

Tanja Krüger: Further joint use cases are already being planned and implemented. In future, the algorithms will also be able to trigger actions independently, such as stopping machines, optimizing their settings or rejecting faulty parts. Together with Festo, we will provide more and more ready-made application models for AI.

How is your AI software distributed across such systems?

Tanja Krüger: Our AI software "Resolto Prognos" consists of two components; one is called "Field", the other "Brain". Field always runs close to the machine, for example in a small controller. A pre-trained model is used, which only has minimal hardware requirements and reliably interprets data streams even without any data connection to the central component (Brain) located in the cloud.

In future, customers will be able to use Festo's IoT gateways as "field" hardware to monitor their machines and systems without data transmission and pursue a wide variety of objectives. If required, the IoT gateways connect to the "My Dashboards" cloud, in which a "brain" with access to many preconfigured application models is embedded.

Monitoring and optimizing machines is the current state of the art, but we are already working on even more powerful algorithms that can train themselves at field level. This is very interesting for collaborative robotics.