Interview
trends in automation:
How do
you think the production of the future
will look?
Dr. Peter Post:
I think the future of
production will demand a great
degree of flexibility and adaptivity.
Huge amounts of time and money
are going into the construction of
production plants that meet specific
requirements. If something changes
in the product, you have to completely
redesign and convert parts of the
plant. I believe that in the future, pro-
duction plants will have components
that are networked in an intelligent
way, carry out their own configuration
with minimal effort and independently
meet the varying requirements in pro-
duction orders. This will give us maxi-
mum flexibility.
trends in automation:
So the
production plant of the future will
have decentralised intelligence?
Dr. Peter Post:
In the context of the
production of the future, decentra-
lised intelligence means that tasks
that are currently still performed by
the master computer will be taken
over by the component. Everything
required to control a single partial
order could therefore be carried out
in the mini control system on site by
the component.
You can read the entire interview at
www.festo.com/research
Dr. Peter Post,
Head of Corporate Research
and Programme Strategy at Festo
The Internet of Things
Futurologists believe that there will
soon be more things than people on the
Internet. Entire systems will be able to
communicate beyond their own physical
boundaries. This will be made possible
thanks to the so-called “Internet of
Things”. A milestone in this development
was reached in June of this year. Most
people will have been completely un-
aware of the switchover to the Internet
Protocol Version 6, which increased the
number of available IP addresses from
4.3
billion to 340 sextillion (sextillion =
a number with 36 zeros). This develop-
ment will allow mobile phones, comput-
ers, cars, transport containers, articles of
clothing and machines to be assigned
their own IP addresses. Hans Vestberg,
CEO of Ericsson, the world’s biggest
provider of telecommunications equip-
ment, believes that up to 50 billion
devices such as cars, for example, will be
networked with one another by 2020.
Sensors installed in a car will detect ice
on the road and send a warning to the
cars behind. Prof. Wahlster, Director of the
German Research Center for Artificial In-
telligence (DFKI), believes that this technol-
ogy will be ready for production in two
to three years. (You can read more about
this topic in the interview on page 8.)
The digital product memory
In the industry of the future, the internal
states of devices, materials, objects and
environments will be recorded using inte-
grated information technology and linked
with the real states of industrial process-
es. For example, the material to be pro-
cessed will use RFID to inform the machine
which work steps have already been car-
ried out and which are still out-standing.
Machines will identify the individual pro-
duct and perform the required work steps
automatically along with any tool changes
that are necessary. The product memory
will also serve as life-long documentation.
Intelligent textiles:
Fabric with an integrated electronic component (LED) and with woven-in
insulated electrical conductors. Possible use in protective clothing with signal messages.
Photo: ITV Denkendorf, Forschungsbereich Smart Textiles