IoT Factory Simulator

Introduction

Industry 5.0, often referred to as the Fourth Industrial Revolution, is a transformative approach to manufacturing and industry that integrates digital technologies, automation, data analytics, and the Internet of Things (IoT) into various aspects of industrial operations. This concept represents a significant shift in how businesses and industries operate, and AI plays a crucial role: it provides the capabilities needed to turn the vast amount of data collected from the industrial environment into actionable insights.

Spreading awareness of what these technologies can achieve and how they can be used to build the factory of tomorrow is among our missions. To accomplish this, we have teamed up with Area Science Park in Trieste to build an IoT Factory Simulator for educational purposes.

IoT Factory Simulator Goals

The IoT Factory Simulator sets two goals:

• To classify the products on the conveyor belt in real-time to assess the quality of products.
• To notify the operators once a defective component is detected.

Proposed Solution

The simulator reproduces an Industry 4.0 system aimed at classifying items flowing on the conveyor belt according to their color and shape. In particular, the objects are disks of three different colors:

• Black
• White
• Metal

and two different shapes:

• Full
• Perforated

The disks transit through a controlled-light environment [the box in figure 1], where a camera observes them and performs the classification [figures 2 and 3]. Finally, a mechanical arm moves the piece into the corresponding bucket.

The data are displayed on a dashboard available to the line operators.

Hardware

The images are captured through a Coral Camera [figure 4], which is connected to a Coral Dev Board [figure 5] with Tensor Processing Unit for real-time disk detection and classification.

This case study illustrates how our IoT Factory Simulator promotes Industry 4.0, offering advanced tools to improve quality and efficiency in industrial operations.