COGNitive Industries for smart MANufacturing (COGNIMAN)

Glass fibre production, precision machining of large parts (e.g. wind turbines), additive manufacturing of medical implants and high-temperature metal production are manufacturing examples with processes that are difficult to automate. The main reasons for the actual labour intensive efforts in these scenarios are lack of full understanding and control over the individual manufacturing steps and the high complexity of the tasks. This has severe impacts on sustainable growth, manufacturing productivity, efficiency and flexibility due to the large amount of unpredictive waste in production and processing time. COGNIMAN is devoted to improving these situations by developing and demonstrating a novel concept of ?digital cognitive smart manufacturing? that will shift the future design of manufacturing processes towards autonomous and predictive manufacturing with improved flexibility, safety and efficiency. This initiative will provide the means to facilitate flexible, resilient, reconfigurable, safe, sustainable, and efficient smart manufacturing by integrating key technologies. They include simulations, digital twins, advanced sensors, machine learning toolbox and cognitive robotics integrated in human-centric modular toolboxes that can be easily adapted to substitute varying manual manufacturing processes. By tackling significant challCOGNIMAN will provide the means to facilitate flexible, resilient, reconfigurable, safe, sustainable, and efficient smart manufacturing by integrating simulation, models, digital twins, sensors, Artificial Intelligence (Machine Learning), data processing and analytics, robotics, and autonomous systems in a human-centric modular toolbox that can be easily adapted to new manufacturing processes and environments with the ultimate objective of boosting the European technology and manufacturing sectors competitiveness towards industrial leadership in global markets, as well as to reduce the environmental footprint of manufacturing activities.