Industrial Automation Using Mobile Cyber Physical Systems

Introduction

The rapid advancements in computation methodologies and cloud computing along with a rapid expansion of the Internet of things have resulted in tremendous advancements in Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) especially in industrial systems. As the name suggests, Cyber-physical systems integrate the cyber world with the physical. The integrated cyber and physical objects constitute a Cyber-Physical System (CPS).

The objects could be any hardware or software resources by which the computational process and other functions can be made possible on an extremely large scale especially in the case of industries or for larger communities. Here the term physical objects may refer to the already existing system or computational resources or large-scale production machines as in the industrial perspective. In short, CPS reiterates or modifies the way we communicate with the physical world. A more detailed explanation of CPS and Industrial Automation would be dealt with in the upcoming sections. Some of the main characteristics of CPS include:

• 1.

  Querying and real-time for processing of the data and further processing,

• 2.

  Decision making from the processed data,

• 3.

  Providing the actual results and recommendations.

CPS over the years has provided efficient and innovative solutions in Healthcare management, Transportation systems, household appliances, distribution systems, Smart Grid, and much more.

The vision called “Smart Factory” is facilitated by the technological concepts of the CPS, Internet of Things, and the Internet of services. The CPS in the context of Industries creates a virtual copy of the physical world and makes decisions that are not centralized. T

That is how CPS helps in communicating seamlessly between the cyber world and the humans. The year 2020-21 has been marked by the COVID-19 pandemic, as a result of which several industries have either remain closed or went out of business, The pandemic has also made industrial experts rethink other production approaches-one such approach is Industrial automation.

Before getting to know what Industrial Automation is, the term “Automation” should be made clear. Automation is the process of providing products and services wherein the process involves minimal human intervention whereas mechanization is the process of manufacturing that requires more human-powered machines and involves decision-making by human intelligence. Thus when we complement Industries with

Automation we can replace manual labor with computer systems that provide better control and robustness than manually controlled systems. The benefits of Industrial automation are:

• 1.

  Increase productivity

• 2.

  Optimum Cost of Production

• 3.

  Improve Product Quality

• 4.

  Reduce routine check

• 5.

  Increase Level of Safety

Thus, as a result, we get better products with fewer expenses incurred in production. In the scope of automation in industries, Industrial Automation (IA) is considered as the next step after mechanization. It not only reduces workload but also increases the production rate, quality, and reliability by adopting new technologies. The architecture of Industrial automation starts from the Field Level to the Control Level, Production level, and to the information level at the top. Based on the methodologies and the way of working the IA can be classified as Fixed, Programmable, Flexible and Integrated.

Some Problems in Industrial Automation are:

• 1.

  Automation based devices are costly

• 2.

  Training automation operating devices take time and are not cost-efficient

• 3.

  Ambiguous predictions may lead to system failure

• 4.

  Requires skilled labor for management and maintenance.

• 5.

  Operating systems of devices need to be periodically trained and updated to manage the changing needs.

• 6.

  Inability to manage remotely

• 7.

  Integration makes it difficult to cope up with the trends