The Intelligent Factory Space - A Concept for Observing, Learning and Communicating in the Digitalized Factory

The current and most important request for industrial automation is from Small and Medium-sized Enterprisess (SMEs). This is due to the fact that the SMEs need to increase their competitiveness to withstand the trend of outsourcing to low-cost countries. However, there are good examples of the strong competitiveness of the European SMEs, when they are able to utilize industrial automation for repetitive work, while utilizing the human labor for tasks requiring human skills, like sensing, flexibility, and cognitive skills. The Intelligent Factory Space (IFS) concept represents a framework for interaction between human and an automated system (digital factory). The IFS is composed of multiple layers (representing different services for the human user) and many modular components, which can be extended to the users' requirements. The IFS relies on industrial standards to communicate with existing machines while using novel two-way communication possibilities to feedback to the human user. In this paper, the general concept for the IFS is presented along with a reference implementation, where the concept is implemented in the situation of the human-robot collaboration.