Claire chatted to Gianmarco Pisanelli from the the University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre about how to promote the safe and intuitive use of robots in manufacturing. He possesses extensive experience in industrial robotics, including PLC programming and the development of intuitive robotic interfaces such as natural speech and augmented reality. As the lead developer for the Robot Operating System (ROS) at the University of Sheffield's Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC), he serves as the primary point of contact for SMEs and major partners.

The AMRC is helping lead a revolution in the UK. Inside its glass-walled, state-of-the-art Factory 2050 facility in Sheffield, the centre develops digital-driven solutions that employ AI, Internet of Things (IoT), robotic and other emerging technologies, all with the aim to solve real-world manufacturing problems. Once considered futuristic, these solutions are ready for full scale deployment today, helping UK manufacturers increase their performance while fueling the Fourth Industrial Revolution. "The whole ethos behind the AMRC is to maintain UK competitiveness in global manufacturing," explains Tom Hodgson, Theme Lead, Inspection and AI, AMRC. "We take ideas that come out of the universities, where they've been developed to a prototype level. Then, with our partner companies, we conduct research projects to transition those technologies into production environments."

Engineers at the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre's Factory 2050 in Sheffield, UK are using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to learn what machine utilization looks like on the workshop floor. The aim is to create a demonstrator to show just how accessible Industry 4.0 technologies are, and how they can potentially revolutionize shop-floor productivity. The demonstrator will be the first created under an emerging AI strategy being produced at Factory 2050, which seeks to harness the innovative work being done with AI and machine learning techniques across the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) and provide real use-cases for these techniques in industrial environments. "Using edge computing devices retrofitted to CNC machines, we have collected power consumption data during the production of automotive suspension components," said Rikki Coles, AI Project Engineer for the AMRC's Integrated Manufacturing Group at Factory 2050. "It isn't a complicated parameter to measure on a CNC machine, but using AI and machine learning, we can actually do a lot with such simple data."