Wireless Sensor Network Aided Assembly Line Monitoring According to Expectations of Industry 4.0

Striving for excellence during the assembling process through incorporating the expectations of Industry 4.0 requires complex information management on issues of overall system status, especially the physical characteristics and position of the parts being assembled, as well as the assembling units and tools. This research introduces both an overall customized assembling system supervision model, which is based on a modified four-layer control system hierarchy that suits the specific requirements of such systems and the developed wireless sensor network technology for assembling process management with a particular focus on localization. The developed model highlights the localization problems of the system as well as other aspects required for overall system status determination. The localization of assembled parts is based on the fingerprint localization method by using the received signal strength indicator. The proposed localization algorithms are based either on artificial neural networks or on the weighted k-nearest neighbor method. The developed model has been tested both in laboratory conditions and in a simulated industrial environment. The research results offer a general solution to the problem of assembling system supervision, regardless of size and shape, with emphasis on the localization problem solution.