COGNitive Industries for smart MANufacturing (COGNIMAN)

Project Information

COGNIMAN

Grant agreement ID: 101058477

DOI

10.3030/101058477

EC signature date 7 December 2022

Start date 1 January 2023

End date 31 December 2026

Funded under

• Digital, Industry and Space

Total cost

€ 10 992 302,50

EU contribution

€ 9 484 631,00

Coordinated by

NORCE RESEARCH AS
Norway

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - COGNIMAN (COGNitive Industries for smart MANufacturing (COGNIMAN))

Reporting period: 2023-01-01 to 2024-06-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The COGNIMAN project arises from the growing need for highly flexible, efficient, and human-centric manufacturing processes in response to the growing market dynamics with increasing global competitions and rapid technological advances. Manufacturing industries in Europe is facing severe challenges such as an increasing low-cost competitions, shortage of high-skilled personnel and growing strict standards on environmental and climate footprint. Therefore, there is an urgent need to integrate AI, robotics, and digital technologies, as critical solutions for boosting their competitiveness and enhancing productivity while ensuring safety and sustainability. These solutions will not only secure jobs in EU manufacturing, but will also improve welfare at work from dirty and dull tasks with safer and more inclusive work environment, so called smart manufacturing.
COGNIMAN aims to contribute to this smart manufacturing by establishing sustainable solutions for focused areas. It aims at conceptualising models, simulation mechanisms, and digital twins for controlling and optimising manufacturing operation parameters. It also targets at developing and integrating advanced sensing systems and robust, explainable machine learning for enhanced flexible manufacturing control at reduced waste. The overall concept exhibits a human-centric design, which creates user-friendly, safety-enhanced collaborative robotics. Through multidisciplinary integration of models, simulations, sensors, actuators, and AI, COGNIMAN will develop and validate the solution in four pilot trials. Additionally, it seeks to establish open-access pilots for knowledge sharing and extend the solution to other manufacturing scenarios though a comprehensive exploitation strategy, including IPR management and replicability.
Summing-up, COGNIMAN is devoted to boosting the competitiveness and leadership of the EU manufacturing sector by providing a solution to enable safe, flexible, reconfigurable, and efficient smart manufacturing. The integration and validation of breakthrough technologies with a huiman-centric design will bring improvements in production processes, environmental benefits, better working conditions, reduced production costs and lower waste.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

COGNIMAN has laid a robust foundation for the development of a versatile, human-centric architecture for smart manufacturing. The first key step was to establish a catalogue of requirements from the four manufacturing environments, where COGNIMAN solutions will be piloted. Central to the project is the creation of a simulation platform incorporating digital twins and advanced robotics, designed to optimize production parameters for reducing waste and increasing productivity in real-world implementations. A foundational framework for this platform has been established, including the development of a live catalog according to the specific instantiations of the four targeted distinct pilots. Concurrent to this, the project has initiated the development of customized sensor suites tailored to diverse manufacturing scenarios, with preliminary data collection underway.
A key focus of COGNIMAN is the integration of human-centric design principles. To this end, extensive data have been collected from human operators to initiate the development of human-machine teaming models. The project has prioritized the creation of safe and ergonomic collaborative work environments, with initial steps towards adapting robotic systems to human needs and preferences. In parallel, the project has embarked on the selection and implementation of machine learning algorithms to enhance real-time process visibility, prediction, and control.
Initial testing of certain components has been performed, yielding promising results. Additionally, the project team has established preliminary connections with related initiatives and stakeholders to foster knowledge sharing and facilitate the future expansion of the COGNIMAN solutions. A robust intellectual property management framework has been implemented to safeguard the project innovations.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

- Human-centric design integration: COGNIMAN explicitly focuses on human welfare and safety at work, incorporating SSH perspectives as a significant step forward to enable trust from the inception phase.
- Modular architecture: offering greater flexibility, adaptability, potential for rapid innovation, and easy integration of third-party developments, also aligning with the increasing trend towards agile and responsive manufacturing processes and systems.
- Digital Twin integration: the development of SINDIT 2.0 is a significant advance to enhance simulation capabilities and parameter optimisation, leading to customised efficient and effective manufacturing processes.
- Sensors: by developing new sensor suites tailored to the specific needs of diverse manufacturing environments, combining multiple sensor modalities and integrating them into a cohesive system, COGNIMAN is pushing the boundaries of sensor data acquisition and fusion to higher precision and reducing downtime.
- Robotics: COGNIMAN’s focus on collaborative robotics will increase flexibility, productivity, and human operators’ acceptability, as they will be able to seamlessly integrate into human-centric workspaces and adapt to changing conditions, representing a significant leap forward in the robotisation processes at flexible manufacturing.
- Explainable AI: crucial for building trust in AI-driven systems, fostering adoption, acceptability and confidence in COGNIMAN solution.
- Data-driven approach: the collection of comprehensive data from multiple manufacturing scenarios provides a strong foundation for developing robust and generalisable models, facilitating the advance towards AI approaches in smart manufacturing environments.
These elements constitute significant improvements towards flexible manufacturing, by keeping the focus on productivity, quality, safety, and sustainability. Additionally, the COGNIMAN target on open access pilots and knowledge sharing will accelerate the adoption of advanced manufacturing technologies across many manufacturing scenarios.