The requirements on production systems are continuously being shifted towards higher flexibility and adaptability. The ReCaM-project will demonstrate at TRL 7 a set of integrated tools for the rapid and autonomous reconfiguration of agile production systems, both at operational as well as managerial levels, integrated with the existing production planning and scheduling tools (MES). This approach is based on intelligent plug-and-produce capable self-describing mechatronic objects, which are able to auto-program and self-adjust to the required task by utilizing parametric capabilities. These next generation flexible production systems and the proposed set of enabling ICT tools will allow a rapid and cost-efficient reaction to dynamic market changes, also in small-lot production contexts, reducing the efforts needed to switch between product types and production quantities. ReCaM-solutions are expected to allow increasing the amount of variants and decreasing the lot sizes by 50% in an economically feasible way. Also, at least 30% reduction in set-up and changeover times and costs are expected. The integrated planning tool will take into consideration the energy consumption of the specific resources and try to minimize it by smart production scheduling, utilization of integrated operating-point switching of mechatronic objects, and reconfiguration. Thus, at least 5% reduction in energy consumption is anticipated. The project will ground on existing de-facto standards and specifications regarding reconfigurable system architectures, resource data models, control architectures and interfaces, and will provide and supplement new specifications for the missing aspects. The ReCaM consortium sees strong involvement of SME’s to RTD and demonstration activities and two end-users from major EU sectors, thus enabling proper exploitation of the demonstrated results worldwide.

Recent years have seen the widespread diffusion of low-cost computational systems, triggering the transition towards even further decentralization towards the Edge of autonomic intelligence. While in the consumer domain this transformation is happening very fast, industrial applications are inevitably more conservative and require solid methodological and technological grounds to guarantee this transition to be dependable. 1-SWARM project focuses on the design-operations for CPSoS with the specific focus on industrial sector of large-scale distribution and logistics. The project aims at achieving industrially acceptable level of robustness of CPSoS whose operation emerges as “Swarm Intelligence”. 1-SWARM’s solution will span across different steps of the value chain, connecting intelligence through the digital domain to maximize their effectiveness and reliability. The objective is to provide a methodological and technological framework, modular and re-usable (“Swarm Intelligence DevOps Framework”), for the engineering of the three major aspects of CPSoS: i) The HW/SW runtime platform that sustains their operations; ii) The distributed and orchestrated Intelligence that guarantees their autonomic behavior; iii) The extension of their “existence” into the cyber-domain for a full life-cycle approach. Key to the exploitability of 1-SWARM’s result is the demonstration of its potentialities for 4 different application scenarios, whose requirements come from cross-domain use-cases, whose variability allows extensive validation of the project technologies: 1) Manufacturing CPSoS for food packaging; 2) Logistics CPSoS for reconfigurable material handling; 3) Fleets of intelligent AGVs in complex dynamic environment; 4) Aerial drones flock for extensive monitoring of retails shops. Strong of its open and standard-based approach, 1-SWARM will create an international collaborative framework for the CPSoS domain, supporting extensively relevant standardization activities.

Daedalus is conceived to enable the full exploitation of the CPS concept of virtualized intelligence, through the adoption of a completely distributed automation platform based on IEC-61499 standard, fostering the creation of a Digital Ecosystem that could go beyond the current limits of manufacturing control systems and propose an ever-growing market of innovative solutions for the design, engineering, production and maintenance of plants’ automation. The following objectives will be reached: -)Ease the conception, development and distribution of intelligence into CPS for real-time execution of orchestrated manufacturing tasks; -)Foster interoperability of CPS from different vendors at orchestration-level (= “between CPS”); -)Simplify the design, implementation and integration of optimal coordinating control intelligence of CPS; -)Enable near-real-time co-simulation of manufacturing systems as a fully integrated “service” of a CPS; -)Create a Digital Marketplace to simplify the matchmaking between offer and demand within the Ecosystem; -)Conceive a multi-sided business model for the Automation Ecosystem and the corresponding business plans for its Complementors; -)Foster the widespread acceptance of the Ecosystem platform to guarantee success and impact of Daedalus multi-sided market. The project approach is based on 3 technological pillars, one platform pillar and a final ecosystem pillar: 1)IEC61499-based reconfigurable automation platform for distributed orchestration of interoperable CPS; 2)“Simulation-as-a-service” for integrated near-real-time co-simulation of CPS behavioural models; 3)Advanced SDKs for simplified design of hierarchically distributed optimal control applications; 4)Digital Marketplace for the creation of an interdependent ecosystem of automation solutions providers; 5)Proof-of-concept showcases to accelerate the involvement of “complementors” and the maturation of the Ecosystem.