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27. Sept. 2018
RICAIP, the Research and Innovation Center for Advanced Industrial Production, is the project of four research institutions including CEITEC Brno University of Technology. Thanks to the cooperation between CIIRC CTU in Prague, CEITEC BUT in Brno and DFKI and ZeMA in Germany, the creation of distributed interconnected robotic testbeds in individual institutions is being prepared to lay the foundations of a Czech-German research center focused on advanced production.
Industry 4.0, the Fourth Industrial Revolution, or Advanced Production are increasingly more sophisticated concepts not only in industry, but also gradually in everyday life. The RICAIP project is concerned with industrial production and interconnected manufacturing systems. If successful in its second phase of the Teaming Challenge, the H2020 program, a research center will be set up to work on a completely new concept of distributed production. Every machine, production unit, or any other entity entering the process will have its "digital twin", which will make it possible to simulate the entire production process, which will speed up significantly and reduce the risk of errors. Thanks to artificial intelligence, production units can also communicate and optimize production.
Already in the first phase of the project, at the end of August 2018, a robotic testbed was completed at CEITEC BUT, which is the cornerstone for further possible future expansion. The Brno testbed includes a combination of machining and 3D printing. Specifically, it is a 3D milling machine and two printers with SLS (selective laser sintering) and FDM (fused deposition modeling). An interesting feature is the method of transporting the manufactured parts, which is performed using an omni-directional robot developed exclusively for this factory. The machines in this demonstration production unit are fully digitally controlled from the control center. This makes it possible to change the production process of individual machines even during the production of the part. Interfacing with other testbeds can be done in the same way as inside the factory. From the point of view of production, it is practically no matter if the production machine is in the same room or in another country.
The first phase of the project officially culminated on August 30, 2018 at the CIIRC CTU in Prague on the occasion of the RICAIP Testbed Day with the participation of all project partners after twelve months. The project application for the second phase will be submitted during this autumn.