During the years common understanding of the possibilities and perspectives of Virtual Reality (VR) usage has been changed. It is thought that VR is mainly used in entertainment purposes, but it is being used already for many years in different industries, and now with easier access to the hardware it became a helpful and accessible tool that could be used and developed in any field of human activities. In manufacturing, immersive technologies are mainly used nowadays for the visualisation of processes and products combining those visuals into the factory Digital Twin (DT) which is possible to view from the inside look. This feature is already being used in several manufacturing simulation tools, which enable to view onto industrial line / robotic cells via Virtual Reality glasses. However, the potential of using simulations with VR in manufacturing is not fully uncovered. The main aim of this, industrial robotics targeted research is to enable besides simulation also universal control algorithms through Virtual Reality experience, produced by game engine Unity3D, which can be easily modified for a wide range of industrial equipment. The primary outcome of this work is the development of the synchro-nisation model of real and virtual industrial robots and experimental testing the developed model in Virtual Reality and shop floor labs

The adoption of Digital Twin (DT) solutions for industrial purposes is increasing among small- and medium-sized enterprises and is already being integrated into many large-scale companies. As there is an increasing need for faster production and shortening of the learning curve for new emerging technologies, Virtual Reality (VR) interfaces for enterprise manufacturing DTs seem to be a good solution. Furthermore, with the emergence of Industry 5.0 (I5.0) paradigm, human operators will be increasingly integrated in the systems interfaces though advanced interactions, pervasive sensors, real time tracking and data acquisition. This scenario is especially relevant in collaborative automated systems where the introduction of immersive VR interfaces based on production cell DTs might provide a solution for the integration of the human factors in the modern industrial scenarios. This study presents experimental results of the comparison between users controlling a physical industrial robot system via a traditional teach pendant and a DT leveraging a VR user interface. The study group involves forty subjects including experts in robotics and VR as well as non-experts. An analysis of the data gathered in both the real and the virtual use case scenario is provided. The collected information includes time for performing a task with an industrial robot, stress level evaluation, physical and mental effort, and the human subjects’ perceptions of the physical and simulated robots. Additionally, operator gazes were tracked in the VR environment. In this study, VR interfaces in the DT representation are exploited to gather user centered metrics and validate efficiency and safety standards for modern collaborative industrial systems in I5.0. The goal is to evaluate how the operators perceive and respond to the virtual robot and user interface while interacting with them and detect if any degradation of user experience and task efficiency exists compared to the real robot interfaces. Results demonstrate that the use of DT VR interfaces is comparable to traditional tech pendants for the given task and might be a valuable substitute of physical interfaces. Despite improving the overall task performance and considering the higher stress levels detected while using the DT VR interface, further studies are necessary to provide a clearer validation of both interfaces and user impact assessment methods.

Digital twin (DT) is the virtual clone of a factory representing its static and dynamic aspects (e.g., processes, systems, products, etc.) in detail. Among the significant challenges that manufacturing company has to face to implement the DT, one of the most demanding is applying an appropriate software infrastructure, which would enable synchronization of the physical factory with its DT. In this case, it was possible to exploit wide range of capabilities of DT in its full potential. In particular, the DT was used in different conditions to enable various operations within the shop floor, to simulate and assess the factory’s performance. To support companies in addressing this challenge, this paper presents a potential solution, based on the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) middleware, that implements a fully dual-way synchronization between the real and virtual worlds. A case study was carried out to investigate the possibilities to implement the solution. To demonstrate correctness and validity of the approach, tests were carried out in the laboratories of Flexible Manufacturing Systems, Robotics Demo Centre and ProtoLab of Tallinn University of Technology (TalTech).

The current trend of automation and manufacturing is digitalization called Industry 4.0. The digitalization is not only the manufacturing process upgrade but also logistics and intelligent transport solutions. Rapid development of intelligent control techniques has also brought changes in automotive industry and led to developments of autonomous vehicles. This paper presents a concept for an integration of self-driving vehicle ISEAUTO into Industry 4.0. ISEAUTO is a last mile automated shuttle bus designed and built in Estonia for short range transportation.