Says Jim Liu, Adlink’s CEO: “Taiwan’s manufacturing industry has robust capabilities that are well recognised by the world. By combining leading-edge 5G network technologies with open source ROS2/DDS platforms, we have crafted a highly competitive manufacturing environment converging IT [information technology], OT [operational technology] and CT [communications technology], to create a smart robotics industry ecosystem realising challenging ‘Future Factory’ implementations.”
FFG says it will build the world’s first demonstration production line for factories of the future, implementing fast and reliable ROS2-based data exchange. FFG CTO Dr Ren Luo explains: “Factories of the future incorporate numerous portable, flexible, interconnected and dynamically adjustable elements to accommodate customised production with optimal efficiency. The integration of 5G communication technologies and ROS2/DDS platforms at this time will realise high performance implementation.”
Dedicated wireless networking is critical, because, says Adlink: “With ever-growing demands for highly customised products, factories of the future require top-speed real-time data transmission across operations lines. Production line architecture must increasingly support extreme flexibility, interconnectivity and dynamic adjustability, with a wide variety of connected elements, machine-based and otherwise.”
According to Adlink, ROS2 will provide system architecture enabling real-time control and reliable communication. It provides high efficiency middleware for data exchange and is quickly becoming the API standard for smart robotics development.
In this latest effort, Adlink will incorporate AI technologies to develop robot controllers with vision, detection, precision control and real-time communication capabilities as open source tools, thereby allowing standardisation of ROS2 as a common platform for mobile robots. Adlink looks to introduce more than 200 innovative smart robotics products by 2025, with this “further consolidating Taiwan’s position of global leadership in the field”.
Adlink and FFG previously participated in EU research project Clear5G (http://clear5g.eu), which involved Toshiba’s UK business unit and University of Surrey.
