Robotics and Automation as a Foundation of the Fourth Industrial Revolution - Industry 4.0

Abstract

The world has gone through three industrial revolution so far and each of these industrial revolutions is the result of revolutionary innovations. In the first industrial revolution, a steam engine was invented that provided mechanization, in the second industrial revolution, a revolutionary innovation was electric power, and the third industrial revolution came as a revolutionary innovation in the information technology and the Internet. The fourth Industrial Revolution-Industry 4.0, which is in progress today in the world, is taking place through the introduction of Internet of Things and Internet of Services into the production processes and the complete environment in and around the industry. Industry 4.0 will provide networking of machines in production processes and logistic systems in a global environment in the form of the Cyber-Physical System (CPS). Implementation of Industry 4.0 leads us to intelligent manufacturing processes, intelligent machines, intelligent logistics, and will exchange information and control amongst themselves in order to improve production processes. The foundation of Industry 4.0 is Robotics and Automation, Intelligent Sensors, Cloud computing, 3D Printing, RFID, etc. This paper analyzes the implementation of industrial and service robots in production processes, as well as the trend of innovations in the process of developing intelligent sensors.