I see something you don’t

Establishing flexible dynamics, reacting agilely to new conditions, transferring analogue processes into digital ones, remaining highly connected and creating transparency in real time – the maxims that apply to the successful implementation of Bosch Rexroth’s Factory of the Future could be transferred 1:1 to our way of working in this project.

Change of plans

Covid-19 made us reassess our original plan to set up an analogue trade fair stand with a virtual link for a tangible, intelligent factory of the future at Hannover Messe 2020. No problem – thanks to great teamwork with MCI and the responsible team at Rexroth. Originally, part of the Bosch and Rexroth stand was to become a 1:1 representation of the Factory of the Future – including all connected machines within their network. This also includes the so-called Active Shuttles. These are automated transport shuttles that travel between the machines across the intelligent factory floor and constantly communicate with each other. It was precisely these autonomous robots that we made the protagonists in our application: the entire system’s intelligence of the factory was to be experienced from the shuttles’ point of view – literally. To achieve this, we recreated the entire Factory of The Future in 3D and adapted it to the perspective of the shuttles.

Seeing the world through robo-eyes

The intelligent networking works as follows: The real transport shuttles that move between machines report their position in real time to the digital application. The guest can navigate virtually and from the viewpoint of the shuttles along the defined route on screens in live mode and learn more about the different areas and topics of the stations approached. Small information windows display additional content on the individual solutions in the factory. The highlight: the real and virtual shuttles are always synchronised.

99 Problems but WebGL ain’t one

Since the analogue part of the trade fair had to be omitted, we concentrated more on the virtual version, which can now be used at any time from anywhere: Instead of the native touch application for the Microsoft Surface Studio, we developed a WebGL application that also works without a real exhibit and is integrated on our customer’s website. Here, the guest can not only accompany the shuttle ride in live mode, but can freely navigate between the hot spots or the individual machines in manual mode and discover the factory and its intelligence on their own. Intuitively, today’s existing potential of the Factory of the Future is made tangible with innovative technology and located in the reality of the target group at the same time. Always staying true to the Rexroth claim Now.Next.Beyond.