IEEE Digital Manufacturing and Human centered Automation Workshop

The online Digital Manufacturing and Human centered Automation Workshop was co-organized by IEEE Robotic & Automation Society and ISE Dept., PolyU on 17 Jan 2024. I attended the morning session and summarized as follows.

Prof. Xun XU was the first speaker and his topic entitled “Industry 4.0 and Industry 5.0 – Automate or not Automate?”. His presentation included i4.0 for smart factories, interplay of i4.0 and i5.0, and automation in manufacturing.

Firstly, Prof. Xu discussed the smart factory that to be CPS-optimized for individualized customer product manufacturing. A global network of adaptive and self-organizing production units as cloud manufacturing. Smart factory showed sustainable and service-oriented business practices. Then he demonstrated smart factory.

And then he introduced his paper named “Industry 4.0 and Industry 5.0 – Inception, conception and perception” which published on Oct 2021. In which Industry 5.0 definition was showed. Three core values of Industry 5.0 are Human-centric, Resilient and Sustainable.

After that Prof. Xun XU discussed the 4^th and 5^th industry revolutions that i4.0 is technology-driven and i5.0 is value driven. They are co-existence. Techno-Social Revolution with technology as the enabling tools and societal needs as the ultimate goal was purposed. Automation in Manufacturing was also discussed.

Finally, Prof. Xu concluded that a hybrid of i4.0 and i5.0 is the future smart factory. i4.0 needs i5.0 to be reminded of the essential societal needs, value and responsibility as ultimate goals and i5.0 requires i4.0 for technological pushes and solutions.

The second speaker was Dr. Yuqian LU and his presentation topic named “Human-machine Teaming in Manufacturing: Thoughts and Exploration”. In the beginning, Dr. Lu introduced the global trends from mass production to mass customization and then to personalized production. 

And then he introduced the Human-centric manufacturing that could be separated into 5 levels. 

Finally, Dr. Lu introduced human digital twin and cyber-physical integration through human-robot collaboration.

Lastly, some demonstration videos were showed. He concluded to increase awareness on human-centricity and evolving human-machine relationship. Then continuous exploration of human-machine teaming paradigms and need deep human-machine understanding, reasoning and evolution. 

After a break, Digital Twin (DT) session.

Dr Pai ZHENG AR was the third speaker and his topic was “A Mixed Reality-Assisted Digital Twin for Human centric Smart Manufacturing”. He would introduce VR- and AR- dominant DT approach for remote and onsite human-guided learning, respectively.

Firstly, he introduced Human-Machine Symbiotic Futuristic Manufacturing Environment. That included mixed reality (MR) and collaborative intelligence that humans and AI were joining forces. 

Finally, he demonstrated some VR and AR assisted DT applications and predicted the future intelligent manufacturing. 

The fourth speaker was Dr Tao PENG and his presentation entitled “Human Digital Twin from Human Factors Perspective”. Human-centric perspectives is the symbiotic relationship between human factors and emerging technology that is crucial in the social-technical transformation toward industry 5.0. 

Then he briefed the Digital Human Modelling (DHM) development and limitations.

And then Human Digital Twin (HDT) for healthcare was mentioned.

Finally, the comparison between DHM and HDT was discussed. HDT could potentially provide continuous monitoring, assessment and interaction by integrating multi-source data, theoretical models, and AI.

The last speaker in the morning session was Dr. Hailong HUANG and his presentation title named “Human-Machine Cooperative Trajectory Planning and Tracking for Safe Automated Driving”. 

Firstly, he briefed ten benefits of autonomous vehicles (AVs) included roadway safety, productivity, mobility, contactless delivery, etc.

And then he pointed out challenges in automated driving such as safety and legal issues. 

Lastly, Dr. Huang explained the research system architecture that based on human-machine rapidly-exploring random (HM-RRT) for cooperative trajectory planning. Based on the identification of the safe driving area and assessment of human diving risks, the trigger mechanism of the human-machine cooperation is developed.

Reference:

IEEE RAS - https://www.ieee-ras.org/digital-manufacturing-and-human-centered-automation