The Aalto Factory of the Future is a facility for innovation and education of future industrial automation, industry 4.0/ 5.0. It is a testbed space where humans, robots and production stations work together, a platform for projects in the area of advanced information technologies applied to future production systems. It focuses on achieving revolutionary high flexibility by exploiting the architecture of modular autonomous intelligent production units. We aim to achieve high sustainability and improve the wellbeing of the workers by introducing data-driven models that enable human-centric real-time workflow optimization.
We are interested in enabling technologies for production systems that include: Artificial Intelligence, Industry 4.0/5.0 architecture, Industrial Internet of Things, human-machine interaction, wireless communication (5G, Wifi6), edge/fog/cloud computing paradigms, virtual integration, digital twins, remote commissioning, operation and predictive maintenance, human-robot collaboration, simulation, virtual and augmented reality. We invite companies and other stakeholders to collaborate with us!
From a research and innovation perspective the main capability of the Aalto Factory of the Future is focused on software architecture for industrial automation. We are particularly working on integrating flexible concepts for software deployment and reconfiguration with IIoT, digital twins and recent trends in IT-technology. Our research focuses on optimizing the collaborative production systems by developing human-centric dataflow using wearable IoT, affecting ergonomics in the workplace, and introducing novel scenarios of organizing human-robot cooperation with AGVs and Cobots.
Research and innovation work on software concepts shall be primarily supported by
Student work (Master, PhD students)
Contact us for collaboration possibilities: afof@aalto.fi
Aalto Factory of the Future is and has been involved in various international and national collaborative projects:
The Arrowhead flexible Production Value Network (fPVN) project will provide autonomous and evolvable interoperability of information through machine-interpretable content for fPVN stakeholders. The resulting technology is projected to substantially impact manufacturing productivity and flexibility, aiming to double European industrial productivity by applying transformative, autonomous and evolvable information interoperability for resilient and adaptive production value networks
An educational project funded by Finnish Ministry of Education, driven by the challenges of growing urban population that puts strain in food supply. Verticalfarming is the solution to this problem, and the implementation of a multi-disciplinaryeducational training program to prepare young citizens to address the Information and
Communications Technology (ICT) challenges of this relevant food industry use case is the main purpose of CITY-FARM.
The activities of CITY-FARM are divided into three phases, namely: 1) Development of existing courses lectured by team members, focusing on knowledge and comprehension of the new challenges that the vertical farming use case will introduce into the disciplines of electronics, signal and information processing, communications and networking, automation and control, horticulture and hydroponics; 2) Creation of new intensive courses for summer schools, including multi-disciplinary content-variable project-based elective courses, putting emphasis on the application and analysis of competences acquired by students during Phase 1; 3)Instruction of undergraduate student Theses and hosting of international visits for practices,addressing multi-disciplinary challenges and focusing on activities that put together the knowledge acquired during Phase 1-2 to create a new whole.
A key part of CITY-FARM will be the preparation of two summer schools, to be held in Cordoba(2023) and Espoo (2024).
The Self-Made activity will work together with at least 20 Manufacturing SMEs to assess their current digital maturity, identify the
required steps and knowledge needs to accelerate their transformation.
This will be done in a joint consulting and training journey with the individual SMEs, implemented through a series of co-design Digital
Disruption workshops, where needs are identified and plans for the capacitation of the organization are defined. Training and technical
consulting will focus on Digital Twin, Cyber-Physical Systems and Artificial Intelligence to foster SMEs digital transformation and address
smart manufacturing settings.
The proposed activity will be implemented in five different countries (Portugal, France, Czech Republic, Finland, and Lithuania) and the
proposed methodologies for the joint consulting and training journey and for co-design digital disruption workshops will be tested in
different geographical, cultural, and industry settings.
Zero-enabling smart networked control framework for agile cyber physical production systems of systems (Zero-SWARM), is a project with a total public private investment of almost €10 million launched on the 1st June 2022, aiming to accelerate the uptake of advanced 5G technologies by European manufacturing sector. The project mission is to achieve climate neutral and digitized production via a multidisciplinary, human centric, objective oriented innovative approach resulting in technical solutions for open swarm framework, non-public 5G network, active information continuum and digital twin. In essence, it establishes a unique forum where separately maturing technologies of 5G and cloud-edge continuum, data technologies and analysis (including data spaces and GAIA-X) and operational technology (automation and agility) break their siloes to co-design and co-create through 10 trials).
More information : https://zero-swarm.eu/
Aalto Factory of the Future has been a partner in the M-NEST project for two consecutive years 2020 and 2021. MNEST project is funded by the European Institute of Technology (EIT) Manufacturing framework.
M-NEST II aims to deliver innovative courses enabling the financial exploitation of educational assets (e.g., nuggets, Teaching & Learning Factory.) resultant from two previous activities: M-NEST-I and M-NEST-RIS. M-NEST-II has three main goals:
Reboot IoT ()
PERFORM is a European project funded by the EIT Manufacturing, which aims to bring together partners from 4 countries, located in peripheral EU regions, who plan to work collaboratively on a virtual and physical metal additive manufacturing (AM), Teaching Factory. The plan is to develop a demonstrator along with technical content, to train students and upskill industry professionals, in both metal AM and relevant cyber physical technologies. The latter will include the use of data analytics, the digital twin and augmented reality.
One of the emerging Human-Robot-Interaction techniques is the Augmented and Virtual Reality (AR/VR). Combining AR/VR with existing robotics infrastructure is quite challenging. Furthermore, it is even more complicated to get students familiar with all of the required background. The aim of this project is the development of an common, easy-to-use ICT infrastructure for the existing equipment in the labs of the participating partners.
Aalto Factory of the Future has been a partner in the M-NEST project for two consecutive years 2020 and 2021. MNEST project is funded by the European Institute of Technology (EIT) Manufacturing framework.
M-NEST II aims to deliver innovative courses enabling the financial exploitation of educational assets (e.g., nuggets, Teaching & Learning Factory.) resultant from two previous activities: M-NEST-I and M-NEST-RIS. M-NEST-II has three main goals:
LIFT Europe proposes to build a broad learning factories network ecosystem where research and technology transfer between academia and industry is fostered. LIFT aims at building up the skills of the future and ad-hoc training curricula to ensure competitiveness of European manufacturing SMEs
PowerLift continues the activity of the LIFT project, focusing on creating new collaboration platform for data and content exchange between factory partners of the LIFT ecosystem
One of the emerging Human-Robot-Interaction techniques is the Augmented and Virtual Reality (AR/VR). Combining AR/VR with existing robotics infrastructure is quite challenging. Furthermore, it is even more complicated to get students familiar with all of the required background. The aim of this project is the development of an common, easy-to-use ICT infrastructure for the existing equipment in the labs of the participating partners.
SEED is the first business-driven open innovation marketplace that marries the Finnish forest and IT industries. We aim to develop Finnish forest industry competiveness by applying digitalization in a smart way. ( )
This project aims to develop a pilot of cloud-enabled Virtual Learning Environment of our Factory of the Future Laboratory to use in university courses.
More info :
Schneider Electric donation of industrial automation technology, software licenses, and teaching support is to answer for growing need for automation expertise.
Aalto Industrial Internet Campus has been invited to participate in the second phase of Reboot IoT Factory ecosystem that develops digital solutions for the Finnish manufacturing industry.
Students and researchers can use the new facility to explore the applications of cutting-edge communications technologies in Industry 4.0.
