Every so often, a confluence of novel technologies emerges that radically transforms every aspect of the industry, the global economy, and finally, the way we live. These sharp leaps of human ingenuity are known as industrial revolutions, and we are currently in the midst of the fourth such revolution, coined Industry 4.0 by the World Economic Forum. Building on their guideline set of technologies that encompass Industry 4.0, we present a full set of pillar technologies on which Industry 4.0 project portfolio management rests as well as the foundation technologies that support these pillars. A complete model of an Industry 4.0 factory which relies on these pillar technologies is presented. The full set of pillars encompasses cyberphysical systems and Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and big data, robots and drones, cloud computing, 5G and 6G networks, 3D printing, virtual and augmented reality, and blockchain technology. These technologies are based on a set of foundation technologies which include advances in computing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, materials, energy, and finally cube satellites. We illustrate the confluence of all these technologies in a single model factory. This new factory model succinctly demonstrates the advancements in manufacturing introduced by these modern technologies, which qualifies this as a seminal industrial revolutionary event in human history.

Fabricating objects with desired mechanical properties by utilizing 3D printing methods can be expensive and time-consuming, especially when based only on a trial-and-error test modus operandi. Digital twins (DT) can be proposed as a solution to understand, analyze and improve the fabricated item, service system or production line. However, the development of relevant DTs is still hampered by a number of factors, such as a lack of full understanding of the concept of DTs, their context and method of development. In addition, the connection between existing conventional systems and their data is under development. This work aims to summarize and review the current trends and limitations in DTs for additive manufacturing, in order to provide more insights for further research on DT systems.

This paper proposed an innovative mechanical design using the Rocker-bogie mechanism for resilient Trash-Collecting Robots. Mask-RCNN, YOLOV4, and YOLOv4-tiny were experimented on and analyzed for trash detection. The Trash-Collecting Robot was developed to be completely autonomous as it was able to detect trash, move towards it, and pick it up while avoiding any obstacles along the way. Sensors including a camera, ultrasonic sensor, and GPS module played an imperative role in automation. The brain of the Robot, namely, Raspberry Pi and Arduino, processed the data from the sensors and performed path-planning and consequent motion of the robot through actuation of motors. Three models for object detection were tested for potential use in the robot: Mask-RCNN, YOLOv4, and YOLOv4-tiny. Mask-RCNN achieved an average precision (mAP) of over 83% and detection time (DT) of 3973.29 ms, YOLOv4 achieved 97.1% (mAP) and 32.76 DT, and YOLOv4-tiny achieved 95.2% and 5.21 ms DT. The YOLOv4-tiny was selected as it offered a very similar mAP to YOLOv4, but with a much lower DT. The design was simulated on different terrains and behaved as expected.

In this paper, a data mining model on a hybrid deep learning framework is designed to diagnose the medical conditions of patients infected with the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) virus. The hybrid deep learning model is designed as a combination of convolutional neural network (CNN) and recurrent neural network (RNN) and named as DeepSense method. It is designed as a series of layers to extract and classify the related features of COVID-19 infections from the lungs. The computerized tomography image is used as an input data, and hence, the classifier is designed to ease the process of classification on learning the multidimensional input data using the Expert Hidden layers. The validation of the model is conducted against the medical image datasets to predict the infections using deep learning classifiers. The results show that the DeepSense classifier offers accuracy in an improved manner than the conventional deep and machine learning classifiers. The proposed method is validated against three different datasets, where the training data are compared with 70%, 80%, and 90% training data. It specifically provides the quality of the diagnostic method adopted for the prediction of COVID-19 infections in a patient.