Ubisense Smart Factory installed at Daimler

Since the beginning of July 2013, Ubisense Smart Factory is in production on the Mercedes S-class assembly line in Sindelfingen, Germany. In a pilot phase, the system was tested and integrated with the DC tools in two line segments. The remaining stations were then equipped and all the DC tools were integrated in the subsequent step, which went live in July.

Smart Factory is used in the Sindelfingen plant to identify vehicles and assets on the final assembly line and to control tools based on their position. Linked to the vehicle ID, the real-time tracking data is also transferred to other systems in the production facility, so machine operators always know which particular vehicle is arriving at a station—even on those line segments where conventional vehicle sensing systems cannot be used. Cumbersome, manual scanning processes are thus eliminated, vehicles and tools are matched automatically and the correct tool programs are loaded at the respective work stations. As a result, unproductive assembly time is reduced significantly and errors that can occur with manual processes are avoided.

Smart Factory is integrated seamlessly with the car manufacturer’s PLUS manufacturing execution system and allows for a direct control of the DC tools via the Atlas Copco Open Protocol. In the full roll-out, devices and tools provided by other vendors are also controlled via the real-time location data. The system was implemented by Ubisense together with Atlas Copco, who have a strategic partnership since 2009.

"Big Challenges Off the Road" by Automotive Manufacturing Solutions

12 February 2014 | Mark Venables

The volumes may be lower and the unit size larger, but the logistical and manpower issues involved in off-highway manufacturing are similar to the automotive industry

The manufacture of huge off-road vehicles follows many of the same processes found in automotive production. Most of these models are made using flow line processes with line-side kitting and sequenced logistics; the main difference comes in the sheer size and weight of the components and subassemblies.

The Caterpillar Peterlee facility in Durham, UK, is the worldwide manufacturing location for Caterpillar Articulated Trucks and currently produces a six-model range, four with different engine variants that tip the load and two which eject it. Phil Handley, facilities managing director, explains: “We make vehicles with a capacity starting at 25 tonnes right through to a 43-tonne machine. We have machines that we sell into regulated countries from an emissions perspective – tier 4 compliant machines – and we have machines that we can sell to the rest of the world where the emissions regulations are not quite as tight.”

Product variation is quite limited. Unlike their automotive counterparts, off-road vehicle manufacturers generally do not face the constant churn of new models on an annual basis which necessitates re-tooling and significant line changes. “Our cycles are very different from automotive models and lately they tend to be emissions driven,” states Handley. “We are just going through the launch of the tier 4 compliant product along with most of our competitors,” he says, adding that elements of a base model tend to be updated before a new generation is launched.

In addition to the narrower model range, paintshop is less taxing; the majority of construction equipment is yellow, although specific colour schemes for off-highway vehicles such as military camouflage are sometimes requested.
 
Scope as well as scale
Handley refers to the manufacturing philosophy at Peterlee as “flat plate to gate”, with only the drivetrain not manufactured on site. All the drivetrains feature Caterpillar components (gearboxes, axles and engines) that are brought into the plant in sequenced line-side deliveries.

Moving off-highway vehicle components can be a challenge owing to their large size

“We receive flat sheet steel and then go through the standard processes where we cut, bend, weld, paint,” he explains. “We then have a single piece flow line where we assemble various models. It is not actually a physically moving line such as you would find in an automotive assembly plant, but we use product movers to index move the machine along the line as it grows.”
 
There is only a small amount of automation. “We use laser cutting technology and we use robots for welding,” says Handley. “We have an automotive paint plant, but that is not automated. There is more automation in the fabrication process as there are more repeatable processes that we can modular-build.”

When it comes to capacity, line speed and throughput, Handley is somewhat cagey. “We have got capacity in place that meets industry demand and we are continually investing in that capacity,” he states. “We are flexible with our working patterns; we can move people in and out of the process to match the seasonality or cyclical demand, so we can manage peaks and troughs with our process.”

Tackling the size issue
From an automotive perspective, the major difficulty with off-highway vehicles is their sheer size. “The scalability is certainly a challenge,” Handley says. “But you have to bear in mind that, compared to some of the large mining trucks that are manufactured elsewhere within the group, our product is not particularly large; you would fit our completed truck inside the body of one of those [trucks].”

Nonetheless, Handley admits that the scale of moving the parts is certainly a challenge. “But we make our own trolleys and stillages and we have huge cranes to move the components around,” he states. “The actual dump body sits on a special stand that can be raised by a fork-lift and moved to a required position.”

Along with the size and scale of the components, there are ergonomic issues to be addressed. “You need the people who are involved in the manufacturing process to be safe and to be able to move and manipulate heavy components,” explains Handley. “So that can become a challenge and we have had to develop some bespoke equipment that we use to fit various components to the machine.”

A further complication caused by the size of the vehicles, components and assemblies is the space needed for line-side logistics. When working on a flow line, modules need to be available at the right point and at the right time. According to Handley, some of the order-specific, sequencing activities where various options are matched with the product as it moves along the line mean that a large area is required. “We don’t have a lot of opportunity for things to go wrong as we are moving through the manufacturing process, as realigning products is difficult.”

The active tags used in Ubisense’s Smart Factory System transmit data several times per second

Manpower and ongoing needs
Another key challenge faced by Caterpillar and other heavy vehicle manufacturers is staffing. “Along with the process, it is the skills that are our biggest problem,” confirms Handley. This means attracting, developing and retaining the skills that are needed across the full range of positions: welders, fabricators, painters, electricians, manufacturing engineers and design engineers.

“It is quite a challenge attracting young, talented people into the industry,” states Handley. He believes the problem is particularly acute in the off-highway sector: “Maybe automotive companies don’t find it so difficult, but at this end of the market we do." He explains that heavy manufacturing is "not always viewed as an attractive career” because it is seen as a “dirty, dark and dank type environment” – but that this is far from the truth. Peterlee, for one, is a high-tech facility with a clean environment despite the heavy fabrication.

Placing progress in real time

At the AGCO factory at Marktoberdorf in Germany, a recent installation of a Manufacturing Execution System (MES) was being hampered by incorrect data entry during the assembly process. The company opted to automate this activity using the Ubisense Smart Factory System. Over the 4,000m² area, AGCO fitted 76 sensors and 200 real-time location system (RTLS) tags. By precisely tracking the tags on each gear assembly as well as on each subassembly, the company achieved real-time progress monitoring.

“Typically, manufacturers are relying on an operator manually typing in information on a workstation about the job in process,” says Terry Phebey, Ubisense vice-president of marketing. For instance, a gearbox assembly would come into the bay and at a quality control point a worker would have to type information into a terminal or scan a barcode. By instrumenting the area, AGCO was able to eliminate the human data input. The entry of the assembly into the space automatically sends intelligent data to the MES, entirely machine-to-machine.

“All that is required is that at the start of the process the tag is fitted to the part or assembly and an association is made between that part and the serial or bin number,” explains Phebey. “The Smart Factory System uses high-precision UWB real-time location technology combined with GPS for outdoor applications,” he adds. “Users only need three components: active (battery-powered) transponders or tags, designed for different applications; sensors; and software.”

The tags have a unique ID and can, for example, be associated with production data and transmit location radio signals to sensors, which detect the signals and calculate the positions of the tags several times per second. The Ubisense software stores, processes and displays the location data in real time for the user as well as generating events for IT or shop-floor systems.

Customers usually start with a small zone and just a few sensors as proof of concept, then, when they are happy with the ROI and quality metrics, the system is rolled out across the entire assembly process.

Black Hills Corporation selects Ubisense for Network Conflation Solution

Cambridge, UK - Ubisense Group plc (“Ubisense” or the “Company”) (AIM:UBI), a market leader in location based smart technology, announces it has been selected by Black Hills Corporation for a network asset realignment project.

Black Hills Corporation, a leading North American Energy Company has selected Ubisense and strategic partner, we-do-IT, to provide network asset realignment services for its operations in Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming and Colorado.

The Ubisense solution will align Black Hills Corporation’s electric and gas utility assets with up-to-date basemaps to provide their operations with accurate network data to facilitate and support planning, design, customer service, maintenance and support across a wide area of coverage. The Project entails adjusting areas of approximately 2,430,493 nodes with accurate parcel information.

Richard Green, CEO of Ubisense said: “We are delighted to have been selected by Black Hills Corporation for this important project. Our innovative network alignment solution provides the fundamental building blocks of an accurate utility network. This will provide the foundation upon which other activities, such as service restoration, can be provided with a high degree of certainty of the integrity of the network.”

New Ubisense Videos! BMW and Transit Yard Manager

Learn more about our automated parking module for transit yards with this video:
http://vimeo.com/45469112

Learn more about our involvement at BMW by watching this video:
http://vimeo.com/16060985

Enjoy!

Who is Ubisense?

GIS Case Studies: What are people doing with our systems?

1. Black Hills Corporation
Project: Electric Office Implementation

Challenges: The rapid growth of the business left BHC with many overlapping information technology systems. As a result, BHC commissioned multiple projects to consolidate the various systems into a single corporate standard based on the GE Smallworld Office Suite platform.

Ubisense Solution: Ubisense completed a system upgrade evaluation phase which concluded that the GE Office Suites (EO and GDO) were the best option for BHC. Ubisense is currently working with BHC to implement Electric Office and Gas Distribution Office. The new solution has been successfully deployed in multiple regions.

Results: "Standardizing all business units on one platform and database is a critical priority for Black Hills," said Matt Seidl, Manager of GIS Support at Black Hills Corp. "The Ubisense team brought a tremendous amount of experience to the project, which as helped us make decisions quickly. We were impressed by Ubisense' professionalism, organizational and management skills, and Smallworld experience."

2. First Energy
Project: Electric Office Project Development
Challenges: First Energy, a long time PowerOn customer, was having issues with the quality of GIS data that was being fed to PowerOn.

Ubisense Solution: Ubisense worked closely with customer to identify the root cause of the data quality issues, and developed the PowerOn Integrity Checker application to identify and resolve data quality issues that impact OMS.

Results: The PowerOn Integrity Checker has greatly improved the quality of First Energy's OMS data. Our solution included automated data repair actions and a logging mechanism to identify areas where manual fixes are required.

3. Duke Energy
Project: Electric Office Implementation

Challenges: The merger of Duke and Cineregy left Duke with many overlapping information technology organizations and systems. Duke commissioned multiple projects to consolidate the various systems into a single corporate standard based on the GE Smallworld Office Suite platform. Duke was the first Electric Office customer.

Ubisense Solution: Ubisense is providing project management, development support, and day to day operational support for Duke's Office Suite implementation. Currently we have 8 consultants assigned to this project, working on EO, GDO, and GTO.

Results: With the support of Ubisense, Duke has successfully rolled out the GE Office Suite projects to several regions.

How can Ubisense help?

• Extensive experience with enterprise GIS for utilities and communications industries
• Trusted partner to mare than 25 customers around the world
• Currently over 400 customers in 30 countries
• Most of our team has more than 15 years experience with the full Smallworld project suite across a broad range of industries and applications
• Founders Richard Green (CEO) and David Theriault were founders of GE Smallworld. Team includes Peter Batty, Terry Phebey, Jorg Poswig, Russ Chandler, and Dave Harris
• Our team has direct experience with all the major GIS technologies: GE Smallworld, Intergraph, ESRI, AutoCAD
• We can provide strategic advice and coaching for business and technical direction, merging utilities, and for data integrity business impact analysis
• We are leading the way in bringing emerging technology to our customers: MyWorld, Google Maps, OpenStreet Map, Field and Web based tools to bring the most out of geospatial information investment.

RTLS Case Studies: What are people doing with our systems?

1. Metro Transit Bus Depots

Minneapolis, MN, USA
Sensors: 450
Accuracy: 100cm in 2D
Solution: Transit Yard Manager (TYM)

Problem: Buses were being manually located and their location input into the Scheduling and Dispatching System using a paper mark-up sheet which was often out of date.

The Ubisense Solution: Each bus of the 1000 buses of Metro Transit is tagged allowing the Ubisense platform to determine an exact bay, lane, and position of each bus, as soon as it is parked inside the garage and in some outdoor areas. Dispatchers have real time visualization of vehicles for assignment.

Results: Elimination of need for dedicated search personnel in each of the five Metro Transit garages.
Faster and more reliable information about bus location.
Assistance in determining bus departure and arrival times and time spent in maintenance.


 2. BNFL Nuclear Power Facility
Sellafield, UK
Sensors: 8
Accuracy: 30 cm in 3D
Solution: Ubisense Location Platform for personal tracking & radiation dosimters for radiation measurements.

Problem: Sellafield is one of the 20 aging U.K. nuclear facilities being decommissioned. Employees involved in decommissioning and clean-up within the facility are exposed to fluctuating radiation. It is vital to ensure that the amount of radiation to which they are exposed during any one work period remains below the specified limits.

The Ubisense Solution: Employees carrying out work assignments at the power plant wear both Ubisense Tags and WiFi dosimeters, which measure radiation levels. BIL Solutions' software provides views of the facility, which radiation levels depicted in different colors combining location data from Ubisense RTLS with the radiation readings. Workers' dose histories are monitored real-time as an aid to scheduling their work in the plant.

Results: The radiation maps and real-time exposure records significantly improve worker safety and efficiency of the operation.

3. Posco Finex Plant

Pohang, Korea
Sensors: 80
Accuracy: 100cm in 3D
Solution: Ubisense Location Platform for personnel tracking and identification

Problem: In a huge processing plant like this blast iron furnace with multiple floors and complex processing units, worker safety is a prime concern.

The Ubisense Solution: Workers have Ubisense Tags attached to their safety helmets. A combination of precise tracking on five floors of the plant and presence detection on seven other floors improves the safety of each person- help can quickly be guided to lonely workers in case of an emergency. The Ubisense system is integrated with the IBM WebSphere Premises Server solution LAS to bring real-time location information to the plant control room.

Results: Greatly improved worker safety in the plant.

Case Study: University of Illinois- Assisted Living Research

Assisted Living
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have been designing, implementing, and evaluating with test hypothesis an assisted-living supportive software architecture that allows technologies, software components, and wireless devices to work together, dependable, and secure and enable elderly people to regain their capability of living independently. The experiment architecture is called I-Living and has been built to meet several requirements highlighted in the ’blue-box’ above.

RFID and Ubisense technology is used to help elderly people to interact, and make sense, with the environment. Tests will be carried out as well as user group assessments for clear testable hypothesis.
 
Research

The increase of population of elderly people is a social and economic challenge for many countries. According to MIT’s magazine Technology Review, August 2003, ‘’In the United States alone, the number of people over the ages of 65 is expected to hit 70 million by 2030, doubling from 35 million in 200 million, and similar increases are expected worldwide’. The cost of senior care is an area for concern and is recently being reduced by technological means. Because the deteriorating capabilities to sense and interact with the environment, elderly people often live with significantly degraded life quality. This is where I-Living aim to help improve such difficulties.

With the use of Ubisense tags and sensors and other embedded devices such as actuators and Bluetooth-enabled medical devices, elder people can be more self sufficient and independent.

There is an Assisted Living Service Provider (ALSP) which provides web-based interfaces to allow caregivers, healthcare providers and medical experts, to monitor the environment, retrieve/analyse data, and issue feed back. I-Living’s goal is to provide applications to its users which are explained in the ‘green-box’. 
 
I-Living Applications

• Activity Reminder - Wireless enabled devices (e.g., TV’s mobile phones, active tags) send reminder messages when it is time for the elderly person to take his/her medication or any other infor-mation.

• Vital Sign Measurement - The patient can transmit his/her vital signs (such as glucose level, blood pressure etc.) via Bluetooth enabled devices and then to the ALSP server. Should the readings suggest any abnormal health situation, medical instruc-tions will be given to the patient.

• Personal Belonging Localisation - Personal belongings such as eyeglasses, hearing aids etc, are attached with a Ubisense tag. If the person cannot find his/her belonging, with simple vocal command, Ubisense sensors will locate the object.

• Personal Behaviour Profiling - The assisted living environment can profile the movement of an elderly person and detect early warning signs for depression and/or other chronic diseases such as Parkinson's disease.

• Emergency Detection - In case of the need for an emergency (e.g. person has been immobile for a long time), communication channels can be established to notify the relevant care taker and facilitate transmission of electrocardiogram (EKG) in Real-time.

Case Study: Ubisense Illustrate Art's Impact on People

University of Applied Science Northwestern Switzerland: Art's Impact on People

The institute for Art and Design and the University of Applied Science Northern Switzerland spent five weeks observing the reactions of visitors to a special exhibit at the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen. The goal was to obtain new insight into the emotional and cognitive reactions of visitors to the art objects.


Upon registration at the museum entrance, visitors receive a special glove, which is equipped with biometric sensors and an active Ubisense tag. The exhibition is equipped with 20 Ubisense sensors that can locate the visitors positions with an accuracy of 15cm, as they move through the exhibition. In parallel the heart rate and electrical conductivity of the skin is measured and sent to the central server, which receives and analyses the results. At the end of the exhibition, visitors can view the results on a plasma screen showing their emotional excitement levels during the exhibition as well as other interesting data.

A glove wearing visitor

‘’We are delighted with the performance of the Ubisense tracking system’’, declares Roland Waespe, director of the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen. ‘’Our museum building presents a number of architectural challenges for radio based systems and we have been impressed with the reliability and precision of the system in this environment’’.

Research
Ubisense RFID tags transmitted the location data to Ubisense Series 7000 sensors, then forwarded that information to Ubisense’s Location Platform, that exported the captured data to other applications. The biometric data was transmitted via wireless LAN to MySQL database, where it was merged to location information. The location data was then used to determine which specific artworks the visitor had been viewing, how long that individual had looked at each piece. By comparing the biometric data, the researchers could measure a participant’s biological and cognitive reaction to each work of art.


It was found that more educated and elderly visitors had much more interest in classical works of art, whereas younger visitors, tended to be more stimulated by newer, more abstract works. 

A computer screen displaying a visitor's tracks through the museum. The location data, merged with the bio-metric data, showed the visitors which artworks provoked cognitive or emotional responses. Each museum patron was then asked whether the recorded data matched his or her impression of how he or she responded.

  
© Copyright Ubisense 2011

Ubisense Chosen for Fort Bliss Military Operations in Urban Terrain Installation

DENVER – March 7, 2011 – Ubisense announced today that Fort Bliss located in Texas has chosen the Ubisense military training solution to provide precise real-time tracking of personnel and assets, and management of spatial data to enhance the safety and quality of military training at one of its Combined Arms Collective Training Facilities (CACTF).

Ubisense is installing a sensor network throughout a training complex of 25 multi-story buildings that will provide precision tracking in three-dimensions (3-D) throughout the buildings - in rooms, on roof tops and within stairwells.  By combining the General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT) Exercise Control (EXCON) and After Action Review (AAR) system with Ubisense’s precision tracking solution, Fort Bliss personnel can track the exact location of all persons inside of the buildings and improve the safety and efficiency of its training exercises.

In addition, the quality of training is enhanced with on-demand generation of AAR reports that provide comprehensive information on an individual’s training performance. And, with Ubisense’s 3-D capabilities, Fort Bliss personnel can simulate a variety of combat scenarios and record and playback all tracking data per individual or group.

Ubisense’s technology has been installed at multiple military training facilities worldwide, such as at the National Training Center (NTC) at Fort Irwin in California.

“Our solution has been stringently evaluated against a number of other location technologies in the military training environment over the past four years and our solution continues to deliver consistent performance, improved training quality and reduced training costs,” said Jay Cadman, Americas vice president of sales & marketing, Ubisense. “For these reasons, Ubisense was the best fit to work in the GDIT environment at Fort Bliss and we are proud of the working we are doing there.”

To view a video of the Ubisense military training solution in action, visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OSUShslJv0.

Ubisense Transit Yard Manager fast forward demonstration

This video shows a pull out recorded in Ubisense Transit Yard Manager at the Nicollet garage at Metro Transit.  You can see the location of the vehicles accurately captured in the correct lane and spot and then departing the facility on to their routes.

Ubisense to be used in athletics location tracking

Athletics technology hits the fast-track

By Ben Fountain, 19 September 2007
Cutting-edge technology being developed by Cambridge University’s computer lab and engineering department to help top athletes improve their performance has even more legs than was originally foreseen, it appears.

Having showcased the SESAME (Sensing for Sport and Managed Exercise) project at a sports technology expo at the University of York last week, a leading light in the project, Dr Robert Harle, reports a deluge of interest from “a number of international sporting bodies.”

Excitingly from his perspective, all of the expressions of interest so far have come from outside the project’s initial area of focus.

SESAME has been funded to the tune of £2.9m by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and is aimed at developing innovative video and body sensor technologies designed to aid the training of elite athletes.

Dr Harle said: “I was slightly taken aback by the high level of interest I received so quickly after giving the talk at the BA Festival of Science and by the fact that all of it has come from outside the world of athletics. I’ve had contact from a number of organisations asking: ‘How do we get our hands on this?’”

Working with a team from Cambridge University’s engineering department and University College London, Dr Harle and colleagues at Cambridge’s computer lab are concentrating on developing an auto-tracking camera system that follows the athlete around the track as well as the processing architecture capable of crunching the huge amounts of data collected by the high definition cameras and make the information almost immediately available to coaches.

Cambridge-based ultrawideband (UWB) real-time location company, Ubisense, is also involved, assisting in the development of on-body sensors that use small, low-power electronics to collect data about arm angle, knee lift, body lean among other parameters. This data will be transmitted straight to the coach and synchronised to the video streams to allow minute analysis of technique.

Dr Harle said that the fundamental technological challenges had now been cracked and he is preparing to turn the technology over to athletics coaches to have them run the rule over the implementation.

The naked eye has long been the tool of choice for athletics coaches, perhaps supplemented by a single fixed video camera producing pictures of limited value.

These video limitations arise because the coach has to use the camera either to provide useful close-up pictures of a running athlete but which only cover one or two strides, or to generate longer-range shots which show more strides but make it harder to see the athlete’s technique in the necessary detail.

Complete article