Monitoring and control of automated processes
FADA-CATEC works on the monitoring and control of automated manufacturing and internal logistics processes. There are two main lines of development: one dedicated to the general automated processes that occur in factories; and the other referring to the use of tools and techniques that allow better management and flexibility in the monitoring and control of robotic processes. For the monitoring and control of the general manufacturing and internal logistics processes, systems are designed to manage the progress of production in factories organized by stations, identify bottlenecks in real time and measure productivity at each station and shift. Likewise, FADA-CATEC works in the predictive analysis of data (AI) to make estimates of time and resources needed in the stations, as well as for the management of warehouses (raw material and final product). Furthermore, in order to carry out this monitoring, different location technologies are used with sensors, RFID and artificial vision techniques. Finally, so as to control these processes, expert systems and artificial intelligence techniques are used to assist the operator in making complex decisions.
For the monitoring and control of robotic processes, FADA-CATEC develops its own systems through industrial software applications (LabVIEW). These systems allow to customize the man-machine interfaces, as well as to monitor parameters of interest for the process (temperatures, pressures, consumption, etc.). From the developed interfaces can load robot trajectories generated from CATIA V5, and then simulate and edit them. In addition to this, for flexible control of robotic processes are used automatic head exchange systems. In this way, the same robot can perform different tasks by automatically and sequentially loading different work heads, which involves connecting them mechanically and feed them electrically (power and data) and pneumatically.