Abstract
The fourth industrial revolution, or Industry 4.0 (I4.0), makes use of wireless technologies together with other industrial Internet-of-Things (IIoT) technologies, cyber–physical systems (CPS), and edge computing to enable the optimization and the faster re-configuration of industrial production processes. As I4.0 deployments are ramping up, the practical integration of 5G wireless systems with existing industrial applications is being explored in both Industry and Academia, in order to find optimized strategies and to develop guidelines oriented towards ensuring the success of the industrial wireless digitalization process. This paper explores the challenges arisen from such integration between industrial systems and 5G wireless, and presents a framework applicable to achieve a structured and successful integration. The paper aims at describing the different aspects of the framework such as the application operational flow and its associated tools, developed based on analytical and experimental applied research methodologies. The applicability of the framework is illustrated by addressing the integration of 5G technology into a specific industrial use case: the control of autonomous mobile robots. The results indicate that 5G technology can be used for reliable fleet management control of autonomous mobile robots in industrial scenarios, and that 5G can support the migration of the on-board path planning intelligence to the edge-cloud.
Highlights
Seamless system integration is a key aspect of the fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0) [1]
This paper presented an experimental framework for 5G wireless system integration into industrial applications, aimed at providing service to industries, motivated from the lack of digitalization reference models considering in depth wireless performance integration and performance
The framework is complemented by a number of prototyping tools: a network traffic sniffer, a 5G emulator, and a wireless multi-access gateway, which are of a great utility throughout the integration process
Summary
Seamless system integration is a key aspect of the fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0) [1]. Common for most of these concepts is that they require extensive knowledge of information technologies (IT) and operational technologies (OT) As such, they should be viewed as a multi-disciplinary venture, making the transition to I4.0 for a particular company, site or factory not an easy task. To assist in this transition, multiple frameworks/methodologies have been proposed, mainly with the aim of defining roadmaps based on the digitalization and technological readiness levels [4,5,6,7]
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