Converging – Social industrial collaboration environments that integrate AI, big data, and robotics for intelligent manufacturing

Global economic crises and the COVID-19 pandemic have dictated manufacturing firms to rethink their production and business models. Production systems need to adopt both human and automated resources that can work together seamlessly. 

The EU-funded CONVERGING project brings together 16 high-profile partners from several EU and Asian countries aiming to develop, deploy, validate, and promote smart and reconfigurable production systems including multiple autonomous agents (collaborative robots, AGVs, humans) that are able to act in diverse production environments.

The diversifying factors will be a multi-level AI-based cognition (line, station, resource levels) which will exploit the collective perception (Digital Pipeline) of these resources, allowing them to interact with each other and seamlessly coexist with humans under a "social industrial environment" that ensures trustful, safe and inclusive user experience.

CONVERGING has set out the following objectives:

  1. Implementing a highly reconfigurable production system by deploying collaborative robotics and smart mechatronic devices, relying on multi-level AI to achieve autonomy.
  2. Providing open and standard means to interconnect all production entities (Big Data pipeline) for real time capturing (Digital Twin), storing (Data at Rest) and processing (Data in Motion) to support autonomous and collaborative behavior with minimal user intervention.
  3. Establishing a human centered social-industrial environment where all activities and interactions with humans are dynamically shaped to maximize user experience, trust, skills & safety.
  4. Providing the software and hardware interfaces to ensure safe and seamless interaction with collaborative robotic solutions, minimizing learning curves and setup times.
  5. Create innovation ecosystem through a network of open Pilot Lines- involving robotic application stakeholders, SMEs and RTOs to inspire further development and deployment.

CONVERGING will demonstrate its results in the Automotive, Aircraft Production, White Goods, and Additive Manufacturing products processing sectors.

Services provided by Fraunhofer IPK

In Converging, IPK is contributing human-aware flexible planning methods, which can adjust the robot behavior to respond to human and task state, improving ergonomics and timing for collaborative tasks.

Cooperation partners

  • Laboratory for Manufacturing Systems & Automation (LMS)
  • TECNALIA Research & Innovation
  • Electrolux Group
  • IAI - Israel Aerospace Industries
  • Comau S.p.A.
  • PILZ GmbH & Co. KG
  • AIMEN Centro Tecnológico
  • Netcompany-Intrasoft
  • Prima Additive S.r.l.
  • Visual Components GmbH
  • FORD ESPAÑA. S.L.
  • Itera
  • Teaching Factory Competence Center
  • Kawada Robotics Corporation
  • Cranfield University