The Brainport Industries Campus (BIC) is a Factory of the Future Experience Center. From presentation rooms to machine park and anything in between. To facilitate innovation, the campus has everything under a single roof and it offers all the facilities to create a pleasant production and business climate. The BIC has a close connection with the Digital Innovation Hub SOUTH-NL. In the Factory of the Future, research is conducted into data-driven innovations within eight different areas of expertise. This is done in so-called Field Labs, in which partners work together on possibilities for the digital factory. Through research, presentations, test cases and digital twins, they take a step further towards Smart Industry together. The Factory of the Future aims to realize fast, flexible and faultless assembly with projected work instructions. In the factory of the future multiple experiments will be conducted. With regards to how to handle machine data, production processes and information exchange along the chain. Another example is due to an operator support system in a manual assembly workplace. This system helps companies to perform fast, flexible and faultless assembly of different products.

Lean Experience Factory (LEF) is a capability center whose mission is to provide companies with the skills necessary to reach levels of operational excellence and to effectively implement digital transformation through the combination of a scientific approach and an experiential approach. Furthermore, it is one of the nodes of the Digital Innovation Hub within the region Friuli Venezia Giulia. The main objective of LEF is to support companies in developing a sustainable path towards operational efficiency and productivity growth. LEF is part of the  McKinsey’s Digital Capability Center Global Network  (www.mckinsey.com). Capability Centers are  advanced tech-enabled innovation and learning hubs  that allow companies to experience the latest digital and analytics opportunities across the value chain and build the skills to apply them for holistic, lasting impact. Inspired by both Industry 5.0 and Collaborative Intelligence concepts, testing activities will be focused on the human – inspection system interactions. In the Industry 5.0 perspective of AI-driven Autonomous Systems, the Collaborative Intelligence paradigm is indeed emerging as an innovative approach where “Humans and AI join forces”. More in particular, the current TERESA will analyse to what extent the visual inspection system can assist the on-board machine operator and assume human features where workers can be effectively replaced (i.e. the inspection of sizes, dimensions, and quality of the tools to be loaded on the CNC machining centre). By demonstrating the overall validity of the system in assisting the operator on a real work environment, the overarching objectives for the sandbox will: be addressed towards the promotion of the innovative product (promoting innovation); inform policy makers and competent authorities through experimentation and learning, possibly helping them identify areas to improve the regulatory frameworks; let Competent Authorities and regulators learn about developments in the marketplace. Within this framework, aim of the present TERESA will be to address the regulatory and ethical issues derived from the automatic visual inspection system, under controlled conditions.

The Mini-Factory is realised and developed by the Sustainable Production System (SPS) Lab of SUPSI. The activities of the SPS Lab focused on the development of human capital and the innovation of production systems and technologies through education activities at bachelor, master and employment levels, as well as through research, development and technology transfer activities concerning the life cycle of products and industrial processes, in the fields of design, automation and management of production systems and the relative value chains. Key research areas are Supply Chain & Operations, Human- Centred Workplaces, Sustainability and Personalisation, Simulation Technologies. SPS Lab has a twofold soul embodied by different teams pursuing the mission of innovating and digitalising processes by: adapting automation behaviour based on human factors and needs towards human-centred production systems; assessing and optimising processes to improve sustainability and promoting circular economy. The Mini-Factory is a flagship and key asset of the Lab. It is a smart, automated, modular and multi-purpose learning factory empowered by the pervasive use of key digital technologies towards Industry 4.0 paradigm full implementation.The Mini-Factory is equipped with both classical automation technologies (PLC, MES and SCADA programming, precision axes control and pneumatics), as well as advanced technologies, typical of the most advanced smart-factories (IoT, vision systems, simulation and digital twin, advanced measuring methods and smart production management systems, collaborative robotics, AGVs). From an RTD point of view, the factory functions as a pilot plant for research and applied industrial projects, on top of which applications and technologies are developed, tested and integrated.The experiments will show different scenarios where a cobot and humans work together in various tasks (assembly, polishing, screwdriving) and with varying degrees of collaboration (separated and independent, sequential, synchronous, etc.). In some experiments, the humans will be equipped with wearables, allowing to collect data and monitor their conditions to show how humans’ features, if merged with factory entities and process’ features, can be used to improve both process performance and workers well-being. In this scenario, a Human Digital Twin is instantiated to manage data, integrate different AI modules, monitor and orchestrate the system. The twin is realised thanks to the Clawdite platform, a solution developed by the SPS Lab. This platform is designed to instantiate a single source of truth of production systems data, including workers-related ones. It offers a centralised access point that functional modules, including AI-based ones, can exploit to compute complex features, enriching the digital twin, or to make better decisions.

MADE is one of the 8 italian Competence Centers, officially acknowledged as Digital Innovation Hub by European Union. The MADE vision is to lead companies digital and sustainable transformation. On one hand, MADE provides a set of knowledge, methods, technical and managerial skills on digital technologies to support companies in their digital transformation towards Industry 4.0. On the other hand, thanks to the large demo-center of over 2000 m^2, it provides an I4.0 – based pilot production facility for pioneering test, demonstration and development project realization.The aim of the Experiment is develops AI quality inspection system Capsule Picking Vision System to detect stacks of capsules to be picked up from boxes. It allows to practically deploy the concept of Industry 5.0 in manufacturing by: Enhancing human-centric approach, exploiting the “train explain sustain”. Humans train and overview machines to perform quality inspection process and elaborating the results of this process phase; Enhance cognitive ability of the worker, replacing repetitive task with high added value ones (i.e. planning, data, interpretation) Reskilling, shifting traditional low added value task (i.e. quality inspection of capsule) with higher added value ones (i.e. machine training, planning) thus enhancing upskilling of existing workforce towards less frustrating operation. The area is reserved for digital twins, lean production and logistics 4.0 is a small compact plant, where the production of mechanical valves for the oil & gas industry is simulated, in a production chain involving: Robotics is the thread connecting with the third area. The focus is on human-machine and machine-machine collaboration, containing two technological cells. The first island accommodates a number of collaborative industrial robots of different sizes, which are used in the process to mount a fork to a motorbike frame, designed to operate safely when humans are present. A smaller collaborative robots assist the operator in completing the assembly, by carrying out automatic and interactive procedures in full safety. In the second island, we see how an “Operator 4.0” is “augmented” through cyber-physical smart systems, and can handle traditional operations using wearable devices and software to manage and improve adaptive interaction between human and machine.

The iiLab provides a controlled near-industrial test environment with production simulators, collaborative manipulators, cargo transport robots, and IoT platforms. The iiLab is equipped with multiple robotics and automation equipment. The iiLab aims at disseminating the state-of-the-art of advanced production technologies and supporting technology-based innovation. The iiLab is meant to have continuous R&D projects demonstrations and act as a showroom focused on portraying concepts and advanced technologies in the areas of robotics, automation, industrial cyber- physical systems, and industrial internet of things (IIoT). The technological demonstrators installed in the iiLab are transferred to different industrial sectors such as automotive, aeronautics, machinery, metal working, textile, footwear, and logistics. With the iiLab, INESC TEC aims to disclose the state-of-the-art in advanced production technologies, vastly contributing to the industry's smart, sustainable, and technology-based growth. The experiment serves as a working prototype for working environments where levels of automation are high, and the human factor is still of the upmost importance. Such working environments will allow for a safer and more ergonomic cooperation between humans and robotic agents while increasing job interest, overall satisfaction and professional development.