Integration of ROS and Tecnomatix for the development of digital twins based decision-making systems for smart factories.

CAROLINA SAAVEDRA SUELDO; MARIANO DE PAULA; SEBASTIÁN VILLAR ; ACOSTA GERARDO

IEEE LATIN AMERICA TRANSACTIONS

IEEE-INST ELECTRICAL ELECTRONICS ENGINEERS INC

Lugar: Revista electronica; Año: 2021 vol. 19 p. 1546 - 1555

1548-0992

Digital twins employs simulation in conjunction withvirtual environments and a variety of data coming from differentplant equipment and physical systems to continuously updatethe digital models of the world in a feedback loop schemeto facilitate the decision-making processes. The heterogeneityof existing hardware and software requires the developmentof software architectures able to deal with the informationexchange due to the integration and interaction of severalsystem components and autonomous decision-making systems.In this work we propose the design and construction of asoftware architecture that integrates a manufacturing processsimulator with the well-known robot operating system (ROS-Robot Operating System) to easily interchange information withan autonomous decision-making system. The proposal is testedwith the simulator TecnomatixR©and the free distribution ROSMelodic. We present an instance of software architecture fora typical complex case study of manufacturing plants anddemonstrate its easy integration with an autonomous decision-making system based on the reinforcement- learning paradigm.