New Industry 4.0 Advances in Industrial IoT and Visual Computing for Manufacturing Processes: Volume III

Dear Colleagues,

Over the last three years, industrial factories have been experiencing a rapid digital transformation because of the introduction of emerging ICT technologies, such as the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), industrial big data and cloud technologies, deep learning and deep analytics, artificial intelligence, intelligent robotics, cyber–physical systems, digital twins, and visual computing (including augmented reality, visual analytics, cognitive computer vision, new HMI interfaces, and simulation and computer graphics), among others. This is evident in the global trend of Industry 4.0 and related initiatives, which are present in one way or another in many different production strategies at an international level (Industrie 4.0, Germany; industrial Internet, USA; Industrie du Futur, France; made in China 2025, China; etc.).

In the context of high performance manufacturing, the impact of these technologies is clear. Important improvements can be achieved in productivity, systems reliability, parts quality, and human welfare.

Both classical and new manufacturing processes (such as additive manufacturing), based on advanced mechanical principles, are being enhanced by the use of big data analytics on industrial sensor data. In the current machine tools and systems, there are complex sensors that are able to gather useful information, which can be captured, stored, and processed with edge, fog or cloud computing technologies. Manufacturing processes modeling can lead to improvements in productivity and quality and, in several cases, are implemented by means of digital twins on cyber-physical production devices and systems.

In line with this, manufacturing process models (e.g., thermal, vibration, deformation) can be improved with digital monitoring, digital twins, visual data analytics, artificial intelligence, and computer vision, in order to achieve a more productive and reliable smart factory.

On the other hand, the role of the human factor is absolutely fundamental in these new paradigms. The use of collaborative robots is increasing in several applications in order to work alongside skilled human workers. New approaches for augmented reality and immersive virtual reality, as well as other multimodal ways of improving human computer interaction in manufacturing scenarios, are enhancing the capabilities of operators and engineers, so as to capture and reproduce human knowledge, improve their performance in operational tasks, and seamlessly integrate their valuable experience and flexibility in smart factory scenarios for manufacturing. Visual analytics can help in decision-making by management, domain experts, operators, engineers, and so on, by providing user-specific interactive visualization and the exploration of operational data, in combination with machine learning approaches.

In summary, this Special Issue is an opportunity for the scientific community to present recent research regarding industrial IoT and visual computing as key aspects of Industry 4.0 for manufacturing processes.

Prof. Dr. Luis Norberto López De Lacalle
Dr. Jorge Posada
Guest Editors

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