The Laboratory Automation Plug & Play (LAPP) framework is an over-arching reference architecture concept for the integration of robots in life science laboratories. The plug & play nature lies in the fact that manual configuration is not required, including the teaching of the robots. In this paper a digital twin (DT) based concept is proposed that outlines the types of information that must be provided for each relevant component of the system. In particular, for the devices interfacing with the robot, the robot positions must be defined beforehand in a device-attached coordinate system (CS) by the vendor. This CS must be detectable by the vision system of the robot by means of optical markers placed on the front side of the device. With that, the robot is capable of tending the machine by performing the pick-and-place type transportation of standard sample carriers. This basic use case is the primary scope of the LAPP-DT framework. The hardware scope is limited to simple benchtop and mobile manipulators with parallel grippers at this stage. This paper first provides an overview of relevant literature and state-of-the-art solutions, after which it outlines the framework on the conceptual level, followed by the specification of the relevant DT parameters for the robot, for the devices and for the facility. Finally, appropriate technologies and strategies are identified for the implementation.

Supportive robotic solutions take over mundane, but essential tasks from human workforce in biomedical research and development laboratories. The newest technologies in collaborative and mobile robotics enable the utilization in the human-centered and low-structured environment. Their adaptability, however, is hindered by the additional complexity that they introduce. In our paper we aim to entangle the convoluted laboratory robot integration architectures. We begin by hierarchically decomposing the laboratory workflows, and mapping the activity representations to layers and components of the automation control architecture. We elaborate the framework in detail on the example of pick-and-place labware transportation - a crucial supportive step, which we identified as the number one area of interest among experts of the field. Our concept proposal serves as a reference architecture model, the key principles of which were used in reference implementations, and are in line with international standardization efforts.

The conversion of solar energy into electricity makes it possible to generate a power resource at the relevant location, independent of the availability of the electrical network. The application of the technology greatly facilitates the supply of electricity to objects that, due to their location, cannot be connected to the electrical network. Typical areas of use are nature reserves, game management areas, large-scale agricultural areas, large-scale livestock areas, industrial pipeline routes, water resources far from infrastructure, etc. The protection of such areas and assets and the detection of their functionality are of particular importance, sectors classified as critical infrastructure are of paramount importance. This article aims to show the conceptual structure of a possible design of a high-reliability, redundant, modular, self-monitoring, microcontroller-controlled system that can be used in the outlined areas.

The fast evolution in computational and sensor technologies brings previously niche solutions to a wider userbase. As such, 3D reconstruction technologies are reaching new use-cases in scientific and everyday areas where they were not present before. Cost-effective and easy-to-use solutions include camera-based 3D scanning techniques, such as photogrammetry. This paper provides an overview of the available solutions and discusses in detail the depth-image based Real-time Appearance-based Mapping (RTAB-Map) technique as well as a smartphone-based solution that utilises ARCore, the Augmented Reality (AR) framework of Google. To qualitatively compare the two 3D reconstruction technologies, a simple length measurement-based method was applied with a purpose-designed reference object. The captured data were then analysed by a processing algorithm. In addition to the experimental results, specific case studies are briefly discussed, evaluating the applicability based on the capabilities of the technologies. As such, the paper presents the use-case of interior surveying in an automated laboratory as well as an example for using the discussed techniques for landmark surveying. The major findings are that point clouds created with these technologies provide a direction- and shape-accurate model, but those contain mesh continuity errors, and the estimated scale factor has a large standard deviation.

Engineers encounter the problem of friction in any mechanical system. Friction force is strongly nonlinear and varies considerably while the system is working. In the case of high-precision applications friction makes the situation even more complex, as the stick-slip effect occurs near the target position. This paper introduces a pneumatic servo-system for investigation of the behavior of friction near the target position. A new model is proposed which takes the hysteresis loop of the friction also into consideration emphasizing the importance of hysteresis. This paper presents the tensorproduct (TP) based modeling of friction which is suitable for control design. The main advantage of the TP model transformation is that due to its polytopic model form Linear Matrix Inequality (LMI) can be immediately applied to the resulting model to yield controllers with guaranteed performance. The main contribution of this paper is the application of TP model transformation making the identification of friction parameters unnecessary by utilizing directly the measured data itself.