- Speaker #0
Hi everyone and welcome to our booth on the SPS Fair in Nuremberg, Germany. We are live to show you all the innovation. I was talking to you this morning. So today you will see our own Universal Automation demo. Then we'll go with the company Emerim and discover a bit more about what they are doing as a startup within Universal Automation Network. Then we'll move to Clovic Cloud Commissioning, a hot topic which is burning and which is coming there. to us today and they will show us a bit more about their technology and the way they are doing it. Last but not least, an overview of the technology with a discrete manufacturing demonstration done with the University from Aalto. And there we have a demonstration where you can see a bit more about what is being done. So I'm happy to see you today in some other environment. So for those of you who cannot make it to the fair, it's your great chance to be with us today. So let's have a small pause just a time so I can call the people to start with the demonstration. Thank you. So today I'm happy to be with you, Shreya. Shreya, can you please maybe introduce yourself before we go to more demonstration? Yeah, great.
- Speaker #1
Yes, this is my first live and definitely the last one. So I'm a software developer. I work for the UAE all the time. I develop applications. I design the objects. and I deployed it. I work with research projects, we create proof of concepts, and this is how we help contribute to the technology growth.
- Speaker #0
Yes, so basically you are an expert in the Universal Automation technology? Yes,
- Speaker #1
you can say that.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, great. And what can you tell us about the demo that you are demonstrating on the SPS right now?
- Speaker #1
So today we have an interesting demo. We have two cameras from Pogmex, the company which joined Universal Automation. We are going to get some images from two cameras and we have to show them on the cloud. So this is how I'm going to show you the interface to the camera and interface to the cloud via IC640. So this Cognix camera, we developed a library. We have the library to simply drag and drop the object in the system integration and then you deploy the application on the device.
- Speaker #0
So this is the principle of drag and produce I suppose?
- Speaker #1
Yes, this is easily you can say drag and drop, plug and produce. and the second demo we have which is from the enh which is endless and poison yes we have a sensor from them it's a flow meter okay it shows the pressure right now it shows the stable pressure yes we will show this data connecting or communicating with multiple pieces so right now i'm using schneider plc into six two and which will communicate with the flow meter and that we will see on tetra net yeah great sounds great before we go to the demo maybe we can have a
- Speaker #0
a look a bit of of the hardware which are which are demonstrating on the road because i see some hardware from from asa from you said copnex below open and back so a lot of hardware coming from i assume the different technology vendors of the association yes so just to explain us what does it mean to to become a member of the association when you are a technology vendor what does it mean what can i do actually with the technology
- Speaker #1
when you join uao what you can do is we have one shared runtime so that we have one application one technology so the different different technology enh they wanted their sensor to be integrated in 1499 so they don't use another software they don't have to get the separate person who will support the software they will come to the site and they will work on it yes have a raspberry pi esa so it's rastafari is everybody knows it's open source yeah and you can program it very easily we have this which is implemented in asa and you can interface it with the external ios the third device you can say stall this they have their own device on the pncs phone controllers they joined us because they want this one technology to also control their devices yeah so one software but hardware independent you can choose any other hardware and this one technology will be implemented all over it so
- Speaker #0
i think that's a good point for you to Show us now, show us all these works, all the magic works.
- Speaker #1
So, let's go. I will show you now the engineering studio we use. It is EcoStruxure Automation Expert from Schneider Electric. And you are currently seeing an application. As I zoom in, you will see different devices. You see ASA, we have generated a cat. This is an object from IC64099, which is the most important component. Because we have an event-based... technology inside In this CAT, we have different function blocks implemented so that you can have HMI, you can have a control logic, you can have a feedback coming from the cloud.
- Speaker #0
And before we jump into the, let's say, the deep dive, what is inside every block, I see here, if you zoom a bit, I see here that, in fact, what I see on the screen is what I see directly here in terms of hardware. So you kind of place everything following kind of hardware structure. to display your way of programming?
- Speaker #1
Yes, the way of programming and each hardware is connected. You can see there are not many wirings. So the hardware is connected via adapter, which is one of the features of IC61499. The adapter directly shows there is no mess of the wiring and there is no confusion. You directly connect one device to another device simply using the adapters. So they are all connected as you can see on the plates.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, so quite... Quite interesting, quite advanced engineering, and quite easy as well. So, show us. Go ahead. Deep dive.
- Speaker #1
Yes. So, let's deploy the application. As you see, it's already running, but let's deploy it one more time. It's very easy. Each CAD is mapped to its individual device. You see the device M262, which will be mapped to M262. This is a device functionality electric.
- Speaker #0
Yeah.
- Speaker #1
And now we are compiling. It will take a few moments, but it will complete the deployment.
- Speaker #0
Quite interesting. Yeah. So you can decide to select one of the other devices on which you want to deploy. And you can directly, let's say, assign a function to one device. Yes.
- Speaker #1
Yeah.
- Speaker #0
So now what you're doing is deploying, compiling again.
- Speaker #1
I'm deploying two cameras to six devices. Phoenix is our staff. And I'm deploying the interface to the flow meter to M262. So what will happen after the deployment?
- Speaker #0
Yes. So you can see, but we see the LED are starting to flash on our side, showing that it's actually starting to work. Slowly but surely. But anyway, we are in the live, and this is all technical demonstration and so on. There might be some glitches at some point, but that's the beauty of life, seeing how everything works. So I think maybe the time while you are deploying. So basically, when you come to the universalautomation.org booth, that's what you can see on one side, really a demonstration based on software with hardware. So basically, what we are aiming at universalautomation.org, and correct me if I'm wrong, You know, the goal is really to decouple the. the software from the hardware. So making really the software as one piece which is developed to answer to one application without having a look at which hardware is underneath actually. And then you deploy to whatever hardware you're doing.
- Speaker #1
Yes. Okay, so now we are ready.
- Speaker #0
Yes.
- Speaker #1
Instead of going inside all the complicated part, I would like to show you simply the HMI.
- Speaker #0
Yes.
- Speaker #1
Okay, so on the HMI at the bottom point you can see... our flow meter from anderson hoiser okay so the flow meter which is near yeah it's a very big okay so there is a flow right now coming it's a steady there is no extra pressure it's not in the industry so you will see a stable value it's fine but the flow meter is communicating with m260 and sending the value to hmi so we have here two devices using ua and time together yes on the top you will see complex camera both are the models Yes, you can connect the camera now.
- Speaker #0
Okay, so let's connect so I see the two cameras one is over here And the other one is is over there.
- Speaker #1
So green light
- Speaker #0
Good and when light is good. No.
- Speaker #1
Yes You see when I try to click a picture yes
- Speaker #0
I see. Okay. Yeah.
- Speaker #1
Yes. What does it mean underneath the camera? There is a kit-kat.
- Speaker #0
Oh, yes. Sure Let me show it to the viewer. So here is the KitKat, which is placed under the camera. I hope I placed it well.
- Speaker #1
Yes, that's correct. Can you... The KitKat is a very efficient, which is edible. Yes, yes. It shows the value.
- Speaker #0
And show it.
- Speaker #1
It says that it's okay, you can eat it. Otherwise, it will say, no, go, don't eat it.
- Speaker #0
Yeah.
- Speaker #1
So that is the purpose of this camera.
- Speaker #0
And can we see what the camera sees, actually? Yes.
- Speaker #1
See? You can open the camera. It's your mic. Yes. We can see how the picture...
- Speaker #0
Oh yeah, that's my key cut.
- Speaker #1
Yeah and these values, so not only the camera is only taking the values or taking the pictures, we also have one of the major features that we can communicate these values to the cloud so that the industry 4.0 comes to life. You see values, they are taken and they are going directly to the cloud.
- Speaker #0
So those were the values which were taken from there which we saw on the HMI? Now we are connected to the cloud and I can see my cloud and retrieve all the values, any historical values, what we're seeing here. Okay, yeah, quite interesting. So what happens if I don't have a good KitKat?
- Speaker #1
Well, we will give you a new, but in case of bad value, we can retrieve these values, we can have a process image, image processing, we can run it on it, and we can reduce the amount of bad KitKats which go out of the manufacturing plant. This is how the last implementation...
- Speaker #0
Just a question. Do we have an implementation of a bad kitkat, for example, to show to the viewers? Yes,
- Speaker #1
we have a bad kitkat. Which one?
- Speaker #0
Which one should I take? Tell me. Okay, let me take... because the viewer has to see. This is really live and we have to try and show you that it's actually working. So I take this one, for example. So this one is melted. It's not very very good, but maybe I show it to the camera so people can... people can really see how it looks like and so on and uh yeah let's let's put it under the the camera and let's let's let's make the trick uh trick work so let's check the hmi yes it's
- Speaker #1
not placed correctly yes yeah you see the hmi i see no go ng that means no go no go if the the Kit Kat is little bit wrinkled or it's Something is broken inside and it's coming outside.
- Speaker #0
It will say no go. Can you show the picture? Can you show the picture so I can see? Yeah, you see? That was my hand as well.
- Speaker #1
And also it will flash red.
- Speaker #0
Yeah. So we can directly see that the KitKat is not good.
- Speaker #1
Yeah.
- Speaker #0
That's been detected by the camera and sent as really not good. So here I would say, what's the value of this application? So basically the program put you. So I have my Kocknext camera. Yes. I assume inside there's an AI. implementation to recognize which products are good and which are not good. And basically connected this AI with one of the devices which is on the wall. And just by a few clicks, we're using a brick which is existing. But this means, because we said a bit earlier, we talk about plug and produce, meaning that we could deploy that to any other device. And this should work the same way.
- Speaker #1
Yes, it should work.
- Speaker #0
That's quite impressive and that's the power of Universal Automation here now. That's what we are promoting since years now. But actually that's what we are showing as well. So it's quite important. We don't have many opportunities to show you, to demonstrate you, basically the demo of Universal Automation. So that's a very good opportunity to be at the SPS, to show live to people who are coming to the fair and for those who don't. still we have the opportunity with the live to demonstrate the demonstration. Do you have something else to show us on the demo or are you done for today?
- Speaker #1
I think we are done for today because we will do complex demos later.
- Speaker #0
Okay so yeah you're preparing yourself for the next live sessions huh? I understood that, that is good. Thank you Shreya and thank you to the viewers. So we have a slight pause just the time to change the speaker. and then we'll come back shortly. So stay put and we'll come back. Thank you. So hi again, welcome back to the SPS Fair, stand of Universal Automation Network. So we have changed speakers, same scenario, but still the same vests.
- Speaker #2
Yes.
- Speaker #0
And I must say you wear it quite nicely Renato. So Renato, just a few words about yourself before we go on to the presentation and what you want to tell us.
- Speaker #2
Nice to be here with you at Universal Automation. At this time I'm here representing EmiRim, my startup which I am CEO, but also Cordiac and Universal Automation and this nice integration that EmiRim is providing to the community. So this year we released the plugin where now it's able to use UAO runtime together with Cordiac and we keep developing things. to make easier and easier to anyone which wants to use 4DX together with universal automation.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, so it's in fact it's an implementation and it's... The live that we did already lately, you've been already twice with us on the live, I believe. The first time was somewhere maybe in February, March, where we show a bit what you are doing as, let's say, solution for automation. Then lately in September, I think you demonstrated this, the 4DX, or was it in August? I don't remember quite well. But quite early in the stage and was a big announcement because now we are finally in over IDE, which could... help and deploy to the UAO runtime. So, yeah. What can you tell us more about this plugin? Maybe a quick recap because some of the viewers, maybe it's new for them. So,
- Speaker #2
yeah. So, on first beginning, we did a plugin that allows for the users to use the UAO runtime if they want to.
- Speaker #0
Yeah.
- Speaker #2
Now we have a new version of the runtime and we are ready to release a new version of it. plugin because also we have a new version of 4DX so every time that new versions come we have to build a new version of the plugin and as something good news that I can bring to the community is that we are starting using a lot of new and new runtime inside our projects yeah so at the end of this year probably we're gonna have a full software defined facilities running full with new runtime And this helps to the growth of UAO because we bring points of views and some questions that we bring to the community and we grow together.
- Speaker #0
So, in fact, what you're saying is that you had until now your product, your solution using 649 and for the automation. And right now you're going the step further, which is really implementing into facilities. Those facilities were at the base, they are in Brazil mainly or they are worldwide as well?
- Speaker #2
Any facility, what I'm doing now is to make the implementation of the plugins in real cases. So we already have our cases that we showed before, like a lot of advanced process control, real-time optimization, a lot of artificial intelligence on the facilities. But now I'm moving into using the technologies we already have together with the...
- Speaker #0
plugin that we developed. Yeah, sounds quite interesting as well. And what is the next step? What do you see for the technology for yourself, for iMERIM? What is your plan?
- Speaker #2
Yes, now right now iMERIM is working on an initiative to create the universal integrators where we create a network of integrators capable of deploying our solutions on the field, not depending too much on us. So we plan to be the technology developers and people can consume this technology if they want to, to use it on their clients, their final clients or to do their own projects.
- Speaker #0
So let me try to rephrase it to make it clear. Your goal is to, let's say, go and develop more and more software, software bricks, software package,
- Speaker #2
what we were calling Plugin Produce in the demo just earlier with the Popnex. But others... integrator could use or reuse in their own application. That's it. That's our plan. And we are really focused on teaching, on learning, on joining people that want to understand how it works, and we are able to help them to go on this way because we believe, among others, that this is the road for the full digital transformation inside industries.
- Speaker #0
That's quite impressive. So I assume that's a call for our viewers, which are system decorators who want to to get, let's say, place a step into the technology and get in the hole in that. And you can for sure support with some IT and automation solutions directly coming from Emmering.
- Speaker #2
Yeah, we can support in many ways from the architecture, from the field to the cloud, from function blocks. We have more than 300 function blocks on 6.14.99 that can be consumed by final integrators or final users.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, quite impressive. Thank you. Any other comments that you want to share with the community?
- Speaker #2
It's a pleasure to be here with you. I'm very happy and the fair is really nice here and everybody here.
- Speaker #0
Can you tell us a bit more about your hat?
- Speaker #2
Oh, okay. So I have a hat here with iMirim name. I have 4DX here and I have here Universal Automation and here I have be a universal integrator.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, so that's really cool. That's really cool to all the viewers. If you want such a cap, and if you're on the fair, you have to come and visit us. Speak to Renato. He has a few I've seen on the stock.
- Speaker #2
Yes, come here.
- Speaker #0
join us and take our cap yeah thank you thank you thank you very much and talk to you later so for the viewers we'll have a short break so we can change a bit scenery and go to the next uh next demonstration which is about uh klovic so please stay put and we are coming to the next demo so i and welcome back we change scenario and i'm here with with michael so before we go into what you have to say about klovich because which what is uh a best one by the way you have the live with kovic i think with the the professor of yetkin in in july so you showed us already a bit of the technology but it's always good to have a reminder and to repeat things you know so i think i'm quite happy to have you here with us to present uh in life during the life this this this presentation so before you keep dive into it please introduce yourself yeah thank you greg
- Speaker #3
My name is Mikhail Kalisnikov. I'm a doctoral researcher from Aalto University. I actually started my path first as an exchange student in Aalto Factory of the Future laboratory, working together with Valery Vyatkin on distributed automation systems and all the modular systems. And then eventually it turned out into a commercialization project, which we're going to talk about, which we actually brought here in the form of demo.
- Speaker #0
Yep.
- Speaker #3
It's very good,
- Speaker #0
very nice. So, I mean, the demo will sit, we don't see it on the camera right now, but it's just right here. And we have our colleague to show us a bit more about the demo itself. But talk to us a bit more about Clobic, what is it, and to the viewers. So I see that the screen is being shared. I will look on my side on this screen as well. Yeah, go ahead.
- Speaker #3
As you can see from the slide. Clovic stands for Cloud Virtual Commissioning. Basically, we are developing a technology endeavor for automation engineers to fill in the gap between the virtual commissioning and the physical commissioning itself. So our project comes from Aalto University. And last year, we received Business Finland funding, which is called Research to Business, which allows small research groups just like us to try commercializing their research advances. And this is what we are doing right now together with UAO. Yeah, but if you want me to describe a little bit the Altafactor in the future, it is a playground where we have different kinds of equipment from various vendors showing the capabilities of flexible and modular distributed automation systems. We have a couple of AGVs with cobalt arms. We have a vertical farm. We have a demonstrator assembly line, which... we actually brought here and we will talk a little bit more on that later later on yeah so this is a playground where based on the real case scenarios we are trying the state-of-the-art technologies and standards such as 64099 uh standard and uao runtime all the all the all the setups that we have in the laboratory are based on that stat clovic itself we have a team of seven people I'm doing a business development I'm caring about the business development responsibility there. We also have here in our booth Tuo John, he is a CTO, main technical champion and what any of that can helps us to contact with the industrial partners. We also have a couple more staff scientists, master students and PhD students helping us on developing this project. So all the necessary skills that we need to accomplish this project are here in the company. Yeah, the vision that we have is that we believe that in modern days, virtual commissioning should be software-defined and should be accurate, scalable, and collaborative. And we believe this can only be done by following the open automation path. So, UAO helps a lot on that. But how does the commissioning look nowadays? Basically, it is fully hardware-driven. It is designed in a way that first you choose the vendor you want to go on with for decades usually, and then you build the logic and your processes around that. And this hardware-driven design does affect and does limit the future of the end users and the system integrators. In a way that brownfield, let's say, they encounter major supply chain disruptions the moment they need to update the hardware. And it's not that easy to jump off from one window and go to another. You would have to start from scratch and this does cause a lot of extra expenses. We wanted extra expenses. Unfortunately, on the market, we have this vendor lock situation and a lot of vendors, they provide box solutions. So they provide both the hardware and software. And in case you want to code your control application, you should choose one and then use the corresponding software for that. And you cannot that easy develop. some control application that would be vendor agnostic.
- Speaker #0
So it means that you're choosing your vendor, you're choosing your software, as you said, for the kids, because you develop and then you're kind of stuck with that development. At some point, I assume the hardware comes to an end of life. So what do you do with the development that you have done? Do you like to start over with the next generation or something? So, yeah, I mean... Vendor independence, vendor agnosticity is really something that people are asking for. We see that from customers. I'm sure today it was as well one of the topics when you have discussed with some of the prospects. So, yeah.
- Speaker #3
Yeah, and end users, they are the main beneficiaries. System integrators, they benefit a lot. And vendors, they also benefit from being early adopters of the open automation. Nobody wants to be in the last carriage of the train or even skipping the train overall. But, yeah, the market situation is that more and more vendors, system integrators, and end users are acknowledging the benefits of the open automation. And there are two big communities that benefit a lot from that. The open process automation group with the open process automation standard and the universal automation organization, which provides us with the runtime that helps to connect all the required pieces of the software. and uh Talking to those partners, we identified that the software-defined approach is the way to do, the way to go. And the IC61499 does bring advantages. First of all, it unlocks the system-level commissioning. You can develop one control application and then map it to the hardware correspondingly. You can change the mapping the moment you need, or you can easily replace the hardware pieces on the fly. This we call plug-and-produce.
- Speaker #0
But we just demonstrated in the demonstration with the Cognex camera. Yeah, it's available for use.
- Speaker #3
Exactly. And it does help you to provide some back compatibility and cross vendor support and end-of-life proof since you can constantly upgrade your piece of software not being too much concern on the older versions of the hardware which can be easily replaced with newer versions Last but not least, we believe that the software-defined approach helps you to do more performance and cost-optimized configurations. And commissioning can be done by independent system integrators. As a system integrator, you don't have to have in your team specialists for each and every proprietary system that you have to serve for your clients. You can just use the vendor-agnostic control application. using the vendor agnostic tools and then work with that. And I think a beautiful example we have here, we brought the demonstrator assembly line. Another good example of the real production case scenario is the action model lighthouse project, which is coming to production very soon. So there are still a couple of problems with the open commission we have identified and what we are trying to solve with the PROVIC tool. So first of all, the soft PLCs that vendors provide. They are not that hardware accurate and there is still a little gap between the virtual commissioning and the physical commissioning in the way that soft PLC is not specific to any piece of hardware. It doesn't have accurate I.O. configurations present there. It doesn't have the proper performance limitations in terms of CPU memory and it doesn't simulate that efficiently. the communication between the devices. It's all hosted on your local machine and it's all limited only by your local machine performance. So basically when you are deploying to the real physical device you sometimes encounter some unexpected errors with the soft VLCs. So that's one problem we want to solve. Another one is that we actually observe among different vendor ids and simulation tools is that you can easily run configurations made of like three, four, five PLCs, but whenever it... comes to a number of thousands or hundreds PLCs, this is easily the pain point. You would easily face their performance limitations and problems. So how do we overcome that? Well, using cloud services or using the dedicated standalone server on the site where you deploy your images. That's another thing we wanted to implement in our tool. And last but not least, existing commissioning tools They are done in a little bit old-fashioned way, and they are non-collaborative. We observed that automation engineers, they are just passing archive project files back and forth. There is no convenient ecosystem with the version control, and there is no capabilities for collaborative real-time updates and updates of the documentation. Yeah, and also all the tools are Windows-compatible exclusively. We wanted to unlock that and make it... possible to commission from your tablet, from the web, from whatever machine you want to use. Just like with the PDF files, you want to be able to open it on any type of device. So that's another thing we wanted to pursue in our project.
- Speaker #0
So we are unlocking on the automation side, let's say by decoupling the hardware and software, and you are unlocking as well on the, let's say, the IT side and the engineering side by not only... limited to a Windows environment, but to open it to every environment.
- Speaker #3
All this piles up into big costs. So one of the examples of the refinery use case, let's say as a plant owner you have 190 programmable logic controllers, the 40,000 inputs outputs and commissioning such system would be around 150 man months and would cost over 2 million euro and more and more costs would come. in the long run if you are going with the vendor-locked solutions. Can this be significantly improved? Of course it can be. Our approach as Aquavik is to develop the cloud-based collaborative commissioning tool for distributed automation systems, which would be vendor-agnostic and based on IC64099 standard. Our core values are the hardware-accurate cloud PLC IPC images. with all the IOs on the place, with all the performance requirements on the place, just like with the physical devices. We're currently working with a couple of different vendors which are already members of the UAO. And so, past years we have been developing this based on our laboratory demo. We will also show it later on to you and in a little more details. So, we developed a tool which would be remotely accessible via web browser. which would have input output layout accurate PLC images of flex bridge, ice blocks, STAL, remote IOs, ASRock, Schneider controllers. And you can easily deploy thousands or hundreds of those images, no problem. And it has a collaborative access. So if we have a look here at the fresh demo, the automation engineer just needs to upload the project file. from the EcoStruxure Automation Expert. Hopefully, there will be more event-diagnostic IDEs, which we will support. And the program itself is capable of parsing this configuration data, and it deploys the corresponding images from the device configuration you had in your project file. It also allows you to check the input-output configuration if it's clear, and then once you deploy it, you can use any IDE you prefer, in our case it was iConstructor or Convention Expert, and basically connect to those images and deploy just like it would be a real physical device. And last but not least, you are able to observe all the changes in the inputs, outputs, and in the CPU memory or network in real time.
- Speaker #0
So this means I'm doing my project, so I have whatever plant which I want to make an application for, my automation program and so on. So I'm doing my project using 649.99, so it means that I'm not developing with the target of any particular hardware, but I'm developing my solution. At some point, I come to the point to select which kind of hardware I want to use to deploy this application. So I can use for sure, Schneider, Stahl, Phoenix Contact, OpenEmbed, or whatever member, ASRub, for example, whatever member of Universal Automation, which you were runtime deployant to. So I do my programming. I assign part of my program to whatever hardware. And then... I basically load my program onto your tool. Your tool can read my programming and say, okay, you have used this, this, this, this hardware. If you want to deploy, I will make the image available for you. Did I understand correctly?
- Speaker #3
Yeah. And in case there are any misinterpretation in the configuration of input outputs, or in case there is a difference in your expectations between the real PLC performance capabilities and what you can see in the simulation, you can easily adjust them without even before even having physical devices on site available. So before purchasing and wasting money.
- Speaker #0
That's a huge... Well, you save a lot of time by doing that. So I can imagine on big projects before deploying to a plant and saying when you are commissioning on site, oh but here there was a mistake which we could have seen. way earlier in the engineering phase. So basically with your tool, this is the time which is saved.
- Speaker #3
The earlier you encounter the problem, the cheaper it would be for you to fix it. And in the long term, Ron, we are planning on developing the performance benchmarking or performance modeling so that just by uploading your control application, our tool would be able to offer you an optimal configuration based on the requirements you input.
- Speaker #0
Okay, good.
- Speaker #3
Yeah. So we believe this would benefit the most to system integrators and industrial end users. We are currently developing it all together with both of those end vendors themselves. And the benefits are just like shown on the screen. I believe if end user and system integrators are capable of introducing all the principles of open automation and if they are using the COVID tool, they can easily save up to 40-50% of the commissioning costs. Yeah, just as I said, we have a pretty long roadmap. We're spinning out next year. We will have a spin-off company from Aalto University, hoping to collaborate more with the UAO and UAO members.
- Speaker #0
Yes, sure.
- Speaker #3
So we are welcome to see all the system integrators and end users and vendors to collaborate.
- Speaker #0
So that's a call to the viewers that you are looking for discussing potential pull-off concepts. So If we have some viewers who are interested in seeing how the cloud commissioning tool is put into place, well, Michael, you're the right guy to speak to in that case. And, well, implement the technology at your facility. So, yeah.
- Speaker #3
Yeah.
- Speaker #0
Thank you, Michael.
- Speaker #3
Thank you, Greg.
- Speaker #0
Any other words, last word that you want to share with the viewers?
- Speaker #3
Oh, let's make the virtual commissioning.
- Speaker #0
the commissioning itself accurate scalable and collaborative yeah that would be the point that would be great thank you uh thank you michael so for the for the viewers please uh stay put we'll change uh another time the scenery for the last demonstration so and to show you a bit more of uh of hardware and of what we are doing here at the at the So stay put and we'll just come back in a few minutes. Hi, Hol, and welcome back to... to the stage. We are here now on the last session with the demonstration of actually let's say discrete manufacturing example with multiple stations. So I'm here with Panay from the Aalto University but he will introduce himself just later. So yeah stay with us, a bit more of hardware, a bit more of software as well. hardware and software decoupling. This is what we show you as well during this demonstration. So now let me turn to Pranay. Pranay, just introduce yourself to the viewer, please.
- Speaker #4
Thank you, Greg. Hello viewers, I'm Pranay from Aalto University. I'm doing my PhD there. I'm a doctoral researcher in my final stage. I've been working with 61499 and Universal Automation since 2019 and I'm basically focusing my research on flexibility how these things can be decoupled and made even more open and cool. That's what the world wants. So that's what I'm focusing my research and PhD on. Today, I'm here to present a small demonstration of the same concept using this machine that we call the Enas demonstrator.
- Speaker #0
Yes. So should we go on with the demonstration?
- Speaker #4
Perfect.
- Speaker #0
So before I do a small disclaimer, as I did before, we are on a fair, we are live. So demonstrations, sometimes they go. not as expected the demo but that's that's quite that's quite normal and this is part of uh this is part of the life but now let's let's go on i will ask before you do that I will use my own camera so people can actually see what you are doing because they cannot see directly what is inside the machine. So can you please put the camera online as well?
- Speaker #4
Perfect.
- Speaker #0
So we can start seeing.
- Speaker #4
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to put this workpiece on the conveyor and then you'll see certain things move.
- Speaker #0
Okay.
- Speaker #4
This discrete manufacturing machine is made out of six conveyors and some pneumatic operations. They pick and place this red and green workpiece on the conveyor and then the components move it around. So you see, something happened. Now the best part is, this is governed by seven different PLCs from seven different vendors that comply with the universal automation technology. So we have Schneider M262, we have Iceblocks and Flexbridge, we have Phoenix Contact, we have the M251 on screen now. And then this side we have the Stahl PLC. So now all these PLCs are working with the universal automation runtime. We've programmed them using the EcoStruxure automation standard. So we have one software, one library all working together and then commissioned with a distributed architecture over this machine. So here we have this endless cycle for the fair in which this keeps rotating. But the interesting part is the distributed deployment and the flexibility to plug and produce and remove things from the machine.
- Speaker #0
So you said a bit about the hardware, but maybe I need to show to the viewers as well. which different hardware that we have. So let's maybe start from this side. So I see here some ice blocks on which the UAO runtime is ported on to. Yes,
- Speaker #4
exactly.
- Speaker #0
Then we have on the next, we have the digital devices. Yes, again,
- Speaker #4
same UAO runtime, the same software elements working on those hardware devices.
- Speaker #0
Yeah.
- Speaker #4
Just distributedly deployed. The next you have is the Schneider M251.
- Speaker #0
Yes.
- Speaker #4
So same concept, the UAO runtime. connected over a distributed network using our network interfaces. The fifth we have is a Phoenix Contact PLC.
- Speaker #0
Yes.
- Speaker #4
So the Phoenix Contact, again, has the UAO runtime. Next we have is Modbus. So the IOs are connected to Modbus. And then we have the soft PLC running on our ASRock International IPC.
- Speaker #0
So this is the ASRock.
- Speaker #4
So we have the runtime installed there. Finally, we have the M262. That is, again, a Schneider device. and As a bonus, we also have the Schneider M580 sitting on the bottom.
- Speaker #2
Ah, let's have a look here.
- Speaker #4
Surprise for the viewers. We have seven different devices working together.
- Speaker #0
So basically, I think we can cut the webcam, cut the camera. So basically, what you're saying is that we have one program. So this is all, this is not like seven different programs. Not at all. prc's this is in fact one program for the whole machine exactly on which you said okay this part are deploying to this device this other part i deployed it to this other device exactly and that's that's it but how how does it work so we program one of the conveyors we program a software element irrespective
- Speaker #4
of what the hardware is so our software is technically vendor agnostic we make the block we copy paste it six times so we have six instances instances of the block yeah And then when I'm commissioning the machine, I'm saying, okay, conveyor one has this PLC. So from my device tree, I select it and I tell one of the code elements to go to the Schneider PLC. So on for the Phoenix contact, ice blocks and so on. Once I map that, I just click the magical deploy button and the runtime automatically distributes it to all these devices and also helps them communicate. So that's the magic we get with universal automation runtime. the simplicity of doing a distributed deployment.
- Speaker #0
So it's like what Shreya just showed us a bit before. She was having with the Cognix camera, we see we have different hardware, and we just apply and select a function block to whatever hardware we want to, and we deploy to that hardware.
- Speaker #4
Exactly. So in this case, if we add a Cognix camera, we can just add those deployments to any one of these devices, and it will just seamlessly work.
- Speaker #0
Okay. Quite interesting. Quite interesting. Any other thing you want to add?
- Speaker #4
I think we are all good. I would just say, welcome to the universal automation world and let's make industrial automation more flexible and open.
- Speaker #0
Yeah. So there is one thing I want to add to what you just said, because we just seen that we have a lot of hardware from different hardware manufacturers, different technology vendors. And you see on the walls, which is behind us, a view on the... on the different logos, on different companies which are trusting us, which are members of Universal Automation Network. And our goal is to develop, is to have more and more members. So we have reached our 100th member. Congratulations! Congratulations now, 100 members within Unix Automation.org. We started with 9,000 members in 2021, so three years ago. So that's a great achievement so far. But still, we keep growing and we keep looking for new, let's say, new members. Could be users of automation, so end users, system integrator, process OEM. Or academia. We need the full, let's say, the full user scale. We are looking for universities. We are looking for academia to join us. We have a very strong academic program, very strong possibilities with the curriculum that we are developing and deploying, as we speak. So to help the next generation being trained on the technology. And we are looking for technology vendors who are looking to make a step into the 6499. And to make this step in 6499, you don't even need... to know about the CISMO-CNN program, whatever thing yourself, you just need to take this runtime execution engine, so this software brick that we are sharing, and put it into your own hardware. So this is the way it's really going. So basically, we are open to new members. We are looking to be, so next year, let's, next year 200, no? Next year 200,
- Speaker #4
SPS 2025.
- Speaker #0
Next year 2025, 200, so we'll do the live and... and tell you about where we stand with the objective. But yeah, you see technology is growing. We show you more and more demonstration, more and more use cases on what we are doing. And this is basically the point behind all of that.
- Speaker #4
This is our path to the future.
- Speaker #0
So yeah, we thank you. We'll have a small Q&A session. In case you have questions, just stay put with us. Ask your question directly through LinkedIn. and we can have a look at your questions. In any case, stay with us. We have a small break and we'll come back in a few minutes. Thank you. Thank you. Come back with the full team now around me. They made the live. So congratulations to you all. This is for some of you, your first live. And this was not a short one. It was not an easy one, but you made it. So first, I want to congratulate all of you. I have not seen any questions on the chat, but let's do it this way that any one of you give maybe a last word about maybe you, your project, UAO, what you foresee. So maybe we start with you, Mikhailo.
- Speaker #3
Yeah,
- Speaker #0
so you can take the mic and take the opportunity to say a few words.
- Speaker #3
I believe the way towards the open automation can only be done if we work together, together with the vendors, with the system integrators and end users and small startups just like Clovic. And together we can bring the required technology enablers on the market, allowing the faster and the adoption of the open automation tools on the market.
- Speaker #1
I would say we are doing something great here. We are doing something different here. And I would like it for each and every engineer to join this community and grow this community with their knowledge. With each input we are growing every day, with each mistakes we make, we learn something new. And IC64099 is always about learning something new. Every day you create an object, you learn how the interfaces work, how the event works. If the event is not coming, you troubleshoot. grow your engineering knowledge. I would say this is the greatest platform ever I joined and I feel alive just using the tech every day, not only going to the office but also meeting our greatest colleagues as well. So I would only say that. Join UAO.
- Speaker #2
Renato, hi. So thank you for your time on the live. I'm very happy to be here with my colleagues and I would like to invite everyone that is watching us That's the giant UAO. It's a good path for digital transformation inside industries. You have a lot of technologies provided by many vendors, by startups. And you can try. And, of course, you can be on the first to visit us to see the demos. We are open to that. Me from my marine, I can say that just send us an email. Just go to our website. We are always open to system integrators, to vendors, to final clients. And that's what I would like to say to you. Thank you very much.
- Speaker #4
Adding to all of this, I would just say, join the flexible world. Be open, be flexible. And the more data we share, the more tricks we share, the more freer we are, the better our automation world becomes. So I would say join you. and still get a chance to be one of the first movers in this big revolution we try to bring. Thank you.
- Speaker #0
So thank you all. So I think last word, last comment before we close this live session. So it's been a real pleasure to have you, to have you all doing that with us again. Thank you. Thank you for showing us. Thank you for giving the opportunity to those viewers who cannot make it to the SPS this year to still have a taste. of what it is to be on the on the ua booth so that next year when they come on the booth they're really happy to see you again and uh i'm really happy to to see how the technology has been evolving and everything so thank you to all of you thank you to the viewer who've made this extra long uh ending live that we did that we did today uh i will just repeat what what you all already said. Jonas, Chinese Universal Automation. a great innovation, a great step into the next generation of automation system about the decoupling of hardware and software. It could be a great step if you are part of the academic program, it could be a great step if you are a user of automation, it could be a great step if you are a technology vendor because you get access to the technology and as a user you can use the technology benefits from it and help us deploy it on the market. So all that to say, thank you again. Thank you to the viewer and see you next time on the live. Bye bye.