RNP and INESC Brazil promote seminar on Industry 4.0
Industry 4.0, also called the Fourth Industrial Revolution, involves an extensive system of advanced IT technologies applied to factory environments to create a "smart factory". However, although this is already a reality worldwide, few companies in Brazil feel unprepared to deal with this new paradigm.
Seeking to change this reality, RNP and INESC Brazil, with the support of the Brazilian Agency for Industrial Development (ABDI), since 2019, has been working on the IND4Fiber project to build a confederate environment (testbed) for experimentation, training, and research related to Industry 4.0.
Between the 22 and 25 of March, the results of this project and its potential for the advancement of Industry 4.0 in Brazil will be presented in a series of seminars on the subject. Registration is free.
Industry 4.0 and its potential for research
Technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, the Internet of Things, Machine Learning, robotics, and cloud computing are the foundations for this new industrial revolution that promises to streamline the manufacturing processes, reduce the time to deliver products, optimize logistics, and reduce manufacturing costs.
Among the major benefits of Industry 4.0 is the preventive maintenance of the factory system through the use of IoT devices, Big Data, and AI, distributed manufacturing in which the use of 3D printers enables local production of custom parts on-demand, and the automatic optimization of the manufacturing process with the use of Data Science, AI, IoT sensors and actuators, robotics and Machine Learning.
Although Industry 4.0 is already a reality abroad, according to a study conducted by the Federation of Industries of the State of São Paulo (Fiesp), in 2019, only 5% of companies in Brazil considered themselves "very prepared" to handle Industry 4.0. According to this same study, 32% of the companies surveyed had never heard of the subject.
For Leandro Mondim, in charge of the IND4Fiber project at RNP, the environment under development brings countless possibilities for experimentation for researchers in the area in Brazil.
"The testbed IND4Fiber offers a unique opportunity for researchers of Industry 4.0 in Brazil, who can conduct experiments with robotic arms, 3D printers, various types of sensors, alarms, and actuators remotely, having, as a result, a 3D visual simulation of the experiment based on the Flexim software", explained Mondim