Web-based simulation of a collaborative robot through universal data integrators and web cad frameworks

Abstract

The digital twin is a general concept of a digital representation of a real object, service, or process. In recent years, the concept has been realized in a multitude of ways including the replication of whole factories in a digital space through Augmented or Virtual Reality, on-line machine learning of a particular process which improves a particular system or provision of monitoring services concerning the conditions of machineries on a shopfloor, all through the ease of web applications and services which provide information transactions between servers and clients alike with the identifications of each users’ internet protocol address. In this project report, we aim to provide a working model of a collaborative robot’s digital twin that will reflect real-time movements based on the information provided from the system of its physical counterpart. The application will be developed through readily available open-source technologies. A large scope in this project that we will focus on lies within the creation of the collaborative robot model settings file, which we will aptly name as a Digital Twin Schematic. This Javascript Object Notation file (JSON) will contain the properties of individual moving parts in the collaborative robot model type, which will ultimately describe the motion of the robot, enabling the simulation of the model. The schematic will be structured and developed to be applicable for multiple collaborative robot types as reusability is important for the purpose of future additions to the library of models. The backend service will be developed through the “.NET” framework, which would allow ease of further future work development due to its’ modular architecture for vi developing microservices as add-ons. Services created would be closely coupled with MongoDB, a non-SQL database, to enable the transfer, storage and reading of information such as the Digital Twin Schema and the CAD models, through a set of developed Representational State Transfer Application Programming Indexes (REST API). The frontend webpages would then be developed through frameworks including Angular 2, SignalR and Three.JS, which respectively provides the foundations of user interface development, WebSocket library for messaging services, and 3D Wavefront object renderer for web applications. These combined frameworks would ultimately result us with the digital twin web application that allows for real-time connectivity to an external data-source to provide simulative capabilities.