Autoware Empowers Small Manufacturers with Advanced AI and Industry 4.0 Solutions

Autoware says it aims to make advanced AI and related technologies available to small- and medium-sized enterprises that would otherwise not be able to afford or implement it.

The EU-funded project calls its offering “cognitive manufacturing”, which includes the integration of Industry 4.0 technologies.

Basicaly, Autoware is a research and development project that helps manufacturing SMEs to integrate new digital technologies in their production processes.

The project is funded by the biggest EU Research and Innovation programme, Horizon 2020.

Over the past three years, 14 industrial and academic partners have been working together in a cross-border European collaboration within Autoware.

Their goal was to develop technologies that could transform industrial production by making different Industry 4.0 solutions, such as robotics and automation, cyber-physical systems and internet of things easier to implement in SMEs.

In todays’s increasingly competitive markets, small and medium-sized manufacturing companies need to adapt quickly to rapidly changing market demands, says Autoware.

The main goal of Autoware is to help those companies to implement Industry 4.0 by creating an open ecosystem that allows SMEs to access new digital technologies and exploit them in their factories.

To achieve this goal, a diverse consortium was formed, which includes partners with high expertise in different areas:

• SQS (Spain);
• Innovalia (Spain);
• IK4-Tekniker (Spain);
• CNR (Italy);
• Fraunhofer (Germany);
• Blue Ocean Robotics (Denmark);
• SmartFactory-KL (Germany);
• Imec (Belgium);
• TTTech (Austria);
• Robovision (Belgium);
• Jozef Stefan Institute (Slovenia);
• SMC (Germany);
• Miguel Hernández University (Spain); and
• Stora Enso (Belgium).

The Autoware consortium is a mixture of universities, R&D centres, and SMEs, where every partner was developing technologies to bring to market.

SMEs can now get a full overview of the project outcomes that can take the production to the next level.

All the technologies, developed within the project, make robots and machines work smarter together with people.

During the three years of the project lifetime, the consortium introduced technologies that can be used in manufacturing, industrial automation and production facilities.

Autoware Industry 4.0 solutions are both hardware and software technologies within robotics and automation, cyber-physical systems and internet of things.

The integration of such digital technologies into manufacturing processes can help SMEs to stay more efficient in an increasingly competitive environment.

The developed technologies are already demonstrated and validated in a number of use cases and manufacturing settings.

SMEs that are interested in acquiring the latest Industry 4.0 technologies are welcomed to contact the Autoware team to get a free consultation on how to integrate these solutions into the production line.

Main image: The fog computing solution is one of the technologies developed within the Automware project. It can collect, store and analyze machine data as well as run multiple functions on one device.