Mobile vehicles in manufacturing

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-11282013-B2
Application number	US-201915734925-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jun 7, 2019
Priority date	Jun 8, 2018
Publication date	Mar 22, 2022
Grant date	Mar 22, 2022

Abstract

A system comprising at least one mobile vehicle configured to move autonomously. The mobile vehicle comprises a spatial localization system, an autonomous navigation and propulsion unit, a local edge computation unit for a local data analysis at the mobile vehicle by intelligent, dynamically deployable edge analytics software agents, and a communication interface providing a data link to other devices. The system utilizes an automatic deployment of a workflow comprising at least one current task. A mobile measurement vehicle with a spatial measurement sensor unit is configured to establish a temporary instance of a local spatial reference cell for a subset of multiple mobile vehicles and a work piece. The temporary instance of the spatial reference cell is established temporally and is established with an individual level of spatial accuracy and individual limited local range, which individual level is dynamically defined by an accuracy requirement of the current task.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A system comprising multiple mobile vehicles configured to move autonomously in a smart factory environment at which a work piece is processed, each of the mobile vehicles comprising:
a spatial localization system for deriving a location of the mobile vehicle in the manufacturing environment;
an autonomous navigation and propulsion unit configured for providing mobility of the mobile vehicle in the manufacturing environment;
a communication interface providing a data link to at least one other mobile vehicle or to a fog or cloud computation and storage system; and
an edge computation unit for a local data analysis at the mobile vehicle by intelligent, deployable edge analytics software agents and configured to interact via the communication interface,
wherein an automatic deployment of a workflow information for the processing of the work-piece for the mobile vehicles is established via the communication interface, which workflow comprises at least one current task,
wherein at least one of the mobile vehicles is configured as a mobile measurement vehicle comprising at least one spatial measurement sensor unit, which mobile measurement vehicle is configured to autonomously navigate to a location in the smart factory environment and to establish a temporary instance of a local spatial reference cell in the smart factory environment, the temporary instance of the spatial reference cell comprising the work piece and at least one of the mobile vehicles and being established with data from the at least one spatial measurement sensor unit,
wherein the temporary instance of the spatial reference cell is established temporarily for a limited time of a duration of a current task that has to be established at the work piece, and wherein the temporary instance of the spatial reference cell is established according to individual spatial requirements derived from the current task that has to be established based on capabilities of the mobile measurement vehicle, which are derived by a self-reflection and/or self-awareness of its edge computation unit.

2. The system according to claim 1 , wherein a transfer learning mechanism is established among the edge computation unit at the at least one mobile vehicle and an edge computation unit at a second mobile vehicle, or among the edge computation unit at the at least one mobile vehicles and the fog or cloud computation system.

3. The system according to claim 1 , wherein the establishing of the temporary instance of the spatial reference cell comprises:
identifying of one or more persons that are present in a range of the spatial reference cell or persons that are assigned to at least one object that is present in the range of the spatial reference cell or an unrequested mobile vehicle that is present in the range of the spatial reference cell, and
sending a notification to an electronic device assigned to each of the identified persons or to the unrequested mobile vehicle.

4. The system according to claim 1 , wherein the temporary spatial reference cell comprises a measured spatial information of a spatial reference in the manufacturing environment according to an additionally fixed spatial measurement sensor or an optical reference mark at the manufacturing environment.

5. The system according to claim 1 , wherein the temporary spatial reference cell is dynamically established by the at least one mobile measurement vehicle, and comprises a measured spatial information of at least one mobile working vehicles that comprises at least one actuator tool or machining tool and a measured spatial information of the work piece.

6. The system according to claim 1 , wherein the at least one mobile measurement vehicle is an unmanned aerial vehicle and the at least one mobile measurement vehicle is an autonomous ground vehicle (AGV).

7. The system according to claim 1 , wherein information derived at the at least one mobile vehicle is locally processed at the edge computation unit by a stream analytics agent, wherein a limited portion of the information which is significant for real-time operation of the mobile vehicle is processed locally at the mobile vehicle by an edge analytics agent, and
wherein substantially all or a defined subset of the information is transferred into the cloud computation system to be processed by a cloud analytics agent at the cloud computation system.

8. The system according to claim 1 , wherein the system comprises at least a first and a second measuring vehicle comprising different types of spatial measurement sensor units, and wherein the first measuring vehicle establishes the temporary local spatial referencing cell comprising spatial measurement information of the second measuring vehicle and of the work piece or the manufacturing environment, and wherein measurement results of the spatial measurement sensor unit at the second mobile measuring vehicle is spatially referenced according to the temporary local spatial referencing cell.

9. A method for manufacturing a work piece at a manufacturing environment by a system comprising at least one autonomously moving mobile vehicle, the method comprising:
autonomous localization and navigation of the at least one mobile vehicle in the manufacturing environment by a spatial localization system and a propulsion or mobile driving unit; and
establishing a data link by a local edge computation unit with a communication interface to at least one other mobile vehicle or to a fog- or cloud- computation and storage system, wherein the at least one mobile vehicle is configured as a mobile measuring vehicle comprising at least one spatial measuring sensor unit, and
wherein the mobile measuring vehicle temporarily establishes an instance of a local spatial reference cell, the establishing comprising data from the at least one spatial measuring sensor unit of the mobile measurement vehicle, wherein the establishing is temporally limited for a duration of a current task that has to be established at the work piece and which spatial reference cell is thereafter dismissed, and
wherein the establishing of the temporary instance of a local spatial reference cell is done with an individual level of spatial accuracy and an individual local range, which individual level is dynamically defined by an accuracy requirement of the current task that has to be established based on capabilities of the mobile measurement vehicle, which are derived by a self-reflection and/or self-awareness of its edge computation unit.

10. The method according to claim 9 , further comprising:
automatically handing over or re-establishing of the local spatial reference cell from the at least one autonomously moving mobile vehicle to an at least one second autonomously moving mobile vehicle in case of a failing of the at least one autonomously moving mobile vehicle to establish or maintain the local spatial reference cell.

11. The method according to claim 9 , wherein the local edge computation unit is automatically calculating the individual level of spatial accuracy and the individual local range from an information dataset of the current task derived from a manufacturing controlling computation unit via the communication interface.

12. The method according to claim 9 , further comprising:
automatically evaluating the current task information by the local edge computation unit at the mobile vehicles based on a workflow information and a current state of the work-piece with a breaking down of the workflow information into a series of atomic tasks.

13. The method according to claim 9 , further comprising:
automatically evaluating of at least one key performance indicator (KPI) in

Assignees

• Hexagon Technology Ct Gmbh

Inventors

• Rana Asif
• Reimann Bernd
• Heili Alexandre
• Meile Silvan
• Mavrov Alexandar
• Steiner Markus

Classifications

• G06Q10/10

  Office automation; Time management · CPC title

• G05B19/41895

  using automatic guided vehicles [AGV] (control of position or course of AGV's G05D1/00) · CPC title

• G06Q10/103

  Workflow collaboration or project management · CPC title

• G06Q10/06393

  Score-carding, benchmarking or key performance indicator [KPI] analysis · CPC title

• G06Q10/0633 Primary

  Workflow analysis · CPC title