As for many industrial sectors, the trend towards a deep grade of digitization of mechatronics systems is ascending considerably year after year. Advantages of digitization are manifold, going from the possibility to test real-case scenarios with cost-effective simulation tools, to the chance to control and optimize real systems by means of their virtual replicas. As a result, enabling technologies such as Digital Twin are in their prime of development. This work intends to contribute to research in this field with a successful application case in a learning factory lab environment. Scope of this work is the modelling, simulation and control of a transfer line, along with the mechatronic equipment operating on it. The simulated system will complete the functionalities and potentialities of the virtual replica of the line in the framework of a Digital Twin-enabled demonstrator. Limitations and future improvements of this work-in-progress activity are also highlighted.

We propose a safety control approach based on the online optimal scaling of the size of bounding volumes used as dynamic safety zones for collaborative robotics. Intersection tests between bounding volumes surrounding robot and human allow the safety controller to identify possible collisions. Our proposed approach optimizes online smooth stop trajectories, to be engaged if a potential collision is detected. Unlike other approaches, the robot dynamics and its torque constraints are here considered to plan optimal trajectories that minimize the size of safety zones surrounding the robot. Simulation results on a validated model of a robot with seven degrees-of-freedom verify the feasibility of the proposed approach.

The spiderspsila ability of walking and climbing on different surfaces and in different conditions is taken into account in this paper in order to define and study a suitable spider-model for a future climbing-robot prototype that can autonomously explore dangerous and extra-terrestrial surfaces. Indeed, the spider shows all of the requisites for the exploration in these non-structured environments: low mass, high motion capabilities, climbing abilities and embedded decision elements. In order to understand how the spiders can walk and climb, the attaching mechanisms, the dynamics of the adhesion and the legspsila movements are evaluated. Thanks to this approach structural and dynamic directives for the model are found and the mobility of the real spider can be studied in order to define a suitable bio-mimetic model.