Agent-based control concept

Figure 2: Schematic representation of the filling concept for the individualized provision of beverages.

© Technical University of Munich

Up to this point, it can be said that The future-oriented Industry 4.0 project initiated by the Federal Republic of Germany offers ideal conditions for opening up new, customer-oriented and flexible value chains for the brewing and beverage industry. This involves merging plant technology components within a network with elements of IT and software components that communicate decentrally via the Internet using a data infrastructure.

A central aspect of this new production philosophy is the decentralized self-organization of production, which requires a product-based control process and thus heralds a fundamental change in the currently dominant manufacturing structures. Such an approach can be implemented with a so-called multi-agent or software agent system, in which each relevant production component represents an intelligent, communicating and purposefully acting object. The intelligent objects have goals that they must achieve independently. In addition, they have internal states about which they can provide information and exchange information with other intelligent objects or humans in production.

To implement the project, it is divided into several areas. The first step is to design the physical production modules of a filling concept (e.g. printer, rinser, filler, capper) as autonomous modules with CPPS capability. A particular technological challenge here is the creation of a flexible filling system. Direct inkjet printing of the bottles is planned for the customized design of the bottles (Till company). In a second core area, a flexible material flow system is used, which takes on the role of an internal logistics service provider. Special industrial robots with intelligent gripper systems realize the function-specific handling at the processing stations. A major task in this respect is the flexible design of the system and control technology in order to be able to react to all circumstances of a context-specific change in the production environment.

Figure 3: RoboFill 4.0 concept overview: The interaction between the customer portal, order system and production process, which results from the interaction between the physical and virtual production environment in the cloud, is shown.

© Technical University of Munich

As a result, the robots used perform a wide variety of handling tasks, which are called up and determined by the goods to be handled themselves. Above all, the gripper technology must be able to adapt to these different processes, as it represents the link between the product and the robot. The focus is on enabling the gripper to adapt quickly to the task, for example in terms of stroke and force. In addition, the handling system should be able to verify the parameters of the bottle, such as its shape, size and weight. The gripping system receives the information about the product to be gripped from the agent system and checks the data via the integrated sensors. In the overall context, this creates a flexible handling system in which the product is checked during the handling process.

The third core area involves the development of the production control concept and the synchronization of the individual material flow and system modules. In line with the guiding principle of production control 'through the product', a software agent system is designed and aligned to the application purpose of robot-assisted filling. In this respect, all physical modules of both the production and the material flow system are to be represented virtually with the help of software agents and the physical production environment is to be synchronized with the virtual image in terms of information technology. The virtual production environment is made up of cloud-based services, which include the agent system, a web-based customer portal and order and data management with a database system. The entire process, including the material flow sequence, can be mapped, coordinated and transferred to the real, physical system components using the cloud-based services.

Each module of the cyber-physical filling system (CPA) logs in with its specific properties and capabilities (skills) and its position data is recorded via the material flow system. The physical modules and the software agents initially only provide basic functionalities in relation to the overall system and are only supplied with production orders and production knowledge by linking the services offered, which correspond to their capabilities. The product-specific parameterization of the processing modules is carried out by the digital shadow of the bottle to be produced, which communicates the parameters directly. To ensure the traceability of all processes, the process data is also communicated and stored by the module.

Finally, an online customer portal is created for the direct integration of the consumer into the desired filling concept, which enables the customer to configure (e.g. different beverages, different containers, customer-specific equipment and design) and order individual beverage products.

Authors:
Prof. Dr. Thomas Becker is full professor at the Chair of Brewing and Beverage Technology at the Technical University of Munich;
Stephan Birle coordinates the RoboFill 4.0 project at the TU Munich;
Georg Götz is Group Leader Flexible Plant Technology at Fraunhofer IWU;
Tobias Voigt is a research assistant at the Chair of Food Packaging Technology at the Technical University of Munich.

The project partners

With the iAgent multi-agent system, Infoteam Software is contributing a core component for decentralized production control to the RoboFill research project. Due to the very close interweaving of hardware and software components, there is also interdisciplinary cooperation between various experts in brewing and beverage technology, filling and packaging technology, robotics, mechatronics, automation technology and information technology who have been proven in their respective fields of activity for many years. Specifically, these are the companies Krones, Beckhoff, Proleit, Zimmer, Siemens, Till and Yaskawa Europe as well as the Weihenstephan state brewery. The scientific and administrative coordination is carried out in cooperation with the Chair of Brewing and Beverage Technology, the Chair of Food Packaging Technology and the Fraunhofer IWU (RMV project group).