Human machine synergies in intra-logistics: Creating a hybrid network for research and technologies

The purpose of the article is to outline the futuristic vision of Industry 4.0 in intra-logistics by creating a hybrid network for research and technologies thereby providing a detailed account on the research centre, available technologies and their possibilities for collaboration. Scientific challenges in the field of Industry 4.0 and intra-logistics are identified due to the new form of interaction between humans and machines. This kind of collaboration provides new possibilities of materials handling that can be developed with the support of real-time motion data tracking and virtual reality systems. These services will be provided by a new research centre for flexible human-machine cooperation networks in Dortmund. By the use of various reference and experiment systems various real-time scenarios can be emulated including digital twin simulation concepts. Big data emerges as an important paradigm in this research project where all systems are made flexible in terms of networking for all the systems to consume the data produced and also to combine all the data to arrive at new insights using concepts from machine learning and deep learning networks. This leads to the challenge of finding a common syntax for inter-operating systems. This paper describes the design and deployment strategies of research centre with the possibilities and the design insights for a futuristic Industry 4.0 material handling facility.