The Miguel Hernández University of Elche (UMH) is a participant in the European AUTOWARE Project financed by the European Commission as part of the Digital Automation H2020 call. This project will contribute to the development of the Industry 4.0 concept, which consists in introducing digital technologies to industry and developing cyber-physical systems for the creation of smart factories (or cyber factories) capable of increased flexibility in production and greater adaptability to market needs and demands, as well as the personalization of products.

Entorno de pruebas de SmartFactory (Fuente: Maiwolf/Lapp)

AUTOWARE, Wireless Autonomous, Reliable and Resilient Production Operation Architecture for Cognitive Manufacturing (http://www.autoware-eu.org/), strives to develop technological solutions based on the Internet of things (IoT) and the services in the cloud that increase flexibility and productivity in factories of the future, starting with the digitalization of production processes and the development of cognitive systems capable of adapting to factory operations and production.

Participation by the UMH in this European project is by the UWICORE laboratory of mobile and wireless communication systems of the Department of Communications Engineering. In this project, the UMH research group leads development of industrial wireless communication networks that will facilitate interconnectivity between machines (including mobile robots), products and services in the cloud, as well as the exchange of data in real time to improve decision making processes, detect errors or inefficiency, in addition to adapting production processes more quickly and with greater agility. UMH research focuses on guaranteeing reliability and low latency of wireless communications, permitting wireless connections with mobile robots and designing protocols capable of reconfiguring industrial wireless networks quickly and effectively when facing changes in factory configuration.

 According to data from the European Union, the digitalization of products and services will contribute more than 110 billion euros per year to industry in Europe in the next five years. In Germany alone, it is thought that over the next 10 years, greater industrial digitalization will lead to growth in productivity of 8%, increased employment by 6%, and increase income by some 30 billion euros per year.

 The UMH is the sole European university in the AUTOWARE Consortium, which is comprised of 14 businesses and research centers: SQS, Innovalia, the UMH, and Tekniker (Spain); SmartFactory, Fraunhofer, and SMC (Germany); TTTech (Austria); Blue Ocean Robotics (Denmark); Robovision and Imec (Belgium); PWR Pack (Holland); CNR (Italy); and the Institut Jozef Stefan (Slovenia).