Information systems play a crucial role in modern manufacturing, revolutionizing the way companies manage their operations, resources, and decision-making processes. These systems leverage technology to collect, process, store, and disseminate information throughout the manufacturing process, leading to increased efficiency, reduced costs, and improved overall productivity.
David’s research explores novel strategies and technologies to one such system in human-robot collaborative assembly. He utilises existing web standards to implement logic-based artificial intelligence in software implementing humans and robots as a multi-agent system in a production context. He also develops a web-based mixed-reality application for use by human operators and robots to communicate their intentions related to the assembly process.
“It was a lot of fun. Engineering is all about building stuff and my research project allowed me to design and build systems in multiple languages across various platforms. The nature of its application made it challenging as it required multi-disciplinary competencies. Along the way, I had to be a design engineer, a knowledge engineer, a computer vision engineer, a robotics engineer, a front-end developer, a systems engineer, and of course, a researcher and to say I learned a lot would still be an understatement, “ he recounts.
A step towards human-centred manufacturing
In 2021, the European Union called for efforts toward a human-centric approach for manufacturing as part of what they envision as Industry 5.0 or the fifth industrial revolution. As future products and production systems become more complex, information systems are expected to assume greater responsibility to compensate for the inherent limits of the human working memory and enable transition towards this human-centred manufacturing.
“We need more research to explore new technologies that help achieve current goals of the manufacturing landscape and my dissertation is the culmination of one such endeavour. The developed models and systems are sufficiently generic and are the result of meticulous execution of design science research. I look forward to having valuable scientific discussions with experts in the field who will be serving as opponents in my doctoral defence,” he adds.
The research project was part of a Cotutelle Program between Tampere University and Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway.
Public defence on Wednesday 27 September
The doctoral dissertation of MSc (Tech) Joe David in the field of Mechanical and Production Engineering titled A Design Science Research Approach to Architecting and Developing Information Systems for Collaborative Manufacturing: A Case for Human-Robot Collaboration will be publicly examined in the Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences at Tampere University on Wednesday 27 September 2023 at 14:00 at TB109 of the Tietotalo building in Tampere University, Hervanta Campus. The Opponents appointed by the Faculty are Professor Kyoung-Yun Kim from Wayne State University, U.S.A and Associate Professor Kristo Karjust from Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia. The Custos will be Professor Eric Coatanéa from the Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences. The custos will be joined by co-supervisor Associate Professor Andrei Lobov from Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway.
The doctoral dissertation is available online.
The public defence can be followed via remote connection.
Photo: Lotta