Digital Industry

Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) bears great value for ABB’s division and their customers. Modern user-friendly and sophisticated approaches leverage the installed base and prepare the ground for novel disruptive technology solutions. At Corporate Research Germany, we combine data analytics, optimization, and physics model-based techniques. We solve concrete customer problems and provide generic as well as dedicated AI solutions that play a key role for ABB’s digital business.

Our project teams follow a systematic hypothesis-driven development approach to transform data from various data sources (e.g. sensors, condition monitoring, logs, reports) into value for the end user. We combine our analytics, software and domain expertise and deliver cutting-edge AI solutions for our divisions and business areas.

Open-innovation is key to succeed in particular for AI-driven solutions. We collaborate with experts from ABB’s divisions as well as with end-customers, creative academic and agile industrial partners, e.g. the public funded projects KEEN (AI solutions for process industries, 2020-23) and FLEMING (ML-based condition monitoring of switchgear, 2019-23).

Robotics

Within the robotics domain, applying our key competences in robot safety as well as motion control & programming for industrial robots, we pave the way towards fully connected systems for task flexible production. 

Our research activities are targeting “smart robots” in collaborative operation which will be aware of their environment & condition. Safe and flexible collaboration between humans and robots will create new manufacturing paradigms in the future.

We improve the application performance by utilizing skill-based programming and multi-modal tools for instructing industrial robots as well as applying modelling and machine learning principles with domain knowledge.

Furthermore, we work on advanced data analytics solutions to generate actionable insights into the robot during its complete life cycle, see e.g. project Productive 4.0.

Connectivity and Integrated Sensing

ABB’s installed base of more than 70 million connected devices provides customers with valuable process and asset related information.

Our research activities contribute towards ensuring the seamless connectivity and integration of any type of automation equipment, including field devices like sensor and actuators, from credit-card sized smart sensors to gearless mill-drives in the size of a house. Thereby we improve productivity and flexibility of production processes, as well as accelerate innovation. Security, simplicity, and manageability, i.e. plug & produce in large-scale production systems, are the cornerstones of the solutions we are developing together with our divisions.

As part of our ongoing research activities for the digital industry, we assess, apply, and advance next generation communication technologies and standards (IEEE, IETF, 3GPP), such as Ethernet-APL (Advanced Physical Layer), Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) or 5G cellular communication. Based on these, we develop software platforms, design guidelines, and management concepts for the next generation of converged networks and IoT-enabled industrial devices. Our interdisciplinary teams contribute with their experience in sensor development, software-defined real-time networks, device and system integration technologies, and flexible and cost-efficient installation schemes.

Sensors and actuators are and remain integral elements of automation systems. They enable digital applications to interact with the physical-world process, in a sense “digitizing” the real world. The application areas range from process control and optimization, quality control and device diagnosis right through to plant asset management. Through our research projects, we develop cutting-edge devices with the aim of expanding functionality and application range. To facilitate these developments, we apply for example smart materials and use energy harvesting and non-invasive measuring technologies. We make the devices more intelligent by advanced signal processing thus moving away from pure measurement data to interpreted, valuable information.

So-called smart sensors based on micro system technology are key enablers for new automation solutions and value-adding services. On system level we investigate pervasive sensing where multiple smart sensors and IoT devices form local networks. Through combination of distributed sensor data and by applying advanced data analytics, e.g. AI techniques, we create higher value information for monitoring and optimization of processes.

Automation Architecture & Secure Systems

In collaboration with ABB’s Divisions, we pave the way for future modular automation architectures of ABB’s software and automation systems. For instance, we devise future automation architectures by evaluating novel software technologies, assess and adopt novel software and automation engineering methods for the business, and develop concepts to bring digital twin technologies to life.

Especially the trend of open process automation supports our way to more cloud and (micro-) service-oriented system architectures for ABB’s business. Based on these architectures, our highly skilled software and IoT experts, design the future backbone by incorporating technologies, like 5G, edge computing, or semantic and system integration solutions based on OPC UA and
the Asset Administration Shell.

In general, the future backbone together with modern automation architectures enable the development and adoption of digital twin technologies for different domains within ABB for our customers, coming from process automation over discrete manufacturing to smart building.

For all these solutions we take care of key architectural concerns and industrial customer requirements such as longevity, performance, reliability, maintainability, security and sustainability. Especially applied cyber security plays a crucial role in future automation systems, e.g., based on open cloud native process architectures. To protect against current and future threats for automation systems, our experts design, prototype, and innovate security technologies, systems, and architectures. A particular focus of our research is on solutions that are secure by design as well as usable and practical, such as secure device provisioning, end-to-end trusted data, secure software development, or resilient data analytics.