The machine you are looking at looks like a real one. Around it, data pop up that display the status of the device in real time, this all expressed by up to five hundred parameters. Attention, there is a problem! But there is no need to panic. A warning and illustrative instructions on how to resolve the issue will immediately appear in front of you. Welcome to the role of “a handyman" in the time of the fourth industrial revolution...

A small example in the introduction illustrates what experts of the Institute of Production Machines, Systems and Robotics (UVSSR) at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of BUT have been working on for years. Last year, they, in cooperation with with TOS Čelákovice, achieved great success, when their multifunctional cylindrical grinding machine BUD 100 MULTI won the Gold Medal at the International Engineering Fair. Their crossing of the threshold of the fourth technological revolution was supported by experts from BUT, who dragged the grinder into, among other things, virtual reality.

"We did not deploy our technology on an existing machine, but on the contrary – virtual reality and a digital twin were part of the design from the beginning. Today, you can watch what a machine is doing from anywhere in the world, show it to customers on the other side of the planet, conduct a remote training or fix a defect. As far as I know, it is the first machine of this type in our region that fully utilizes such a solution," explains the researcher and programmer Jiří Kovář of the ÚVSSR.

Brno University of Technology and TOS Čelákovice cooperated on another joint project of applied research called "Digital Shadow of the BUD100 machine". And they celebrate successes with its result. Originally, the assignment of cooperation sounded completely different. "We should have just created a virtual model of the grinder. But over time, the cooperation with the deployment of our know-how has changed to creation of a digital shadow," says Kovář.

Just as well as with a multifunctional grinder, this long-developed solution can work for any other machine after deployment, and the researchers see here great potential for collaboration across industry. In addition to the above-mentioned company TOS Čelákovice, Fermat and Presskan are already successfully working with it after modifications and adaptation to the character of their processes and machines. And other parties have started to show their interest. The advantage of the software is that, after modifications, it can be applied to all technical solutions that send data.

Of course, success like this did not come out of the blue, but there are years of work and development behind it. "When we started, there was no suitable technology available. For example, augmented reality glasses were just born and it was not known if and how they could be programmed. It was clear to us that we would not find software in the world that could connect and control all the necessary technologies at once, so we decided to create it ourselves. Glasses remained only a tool for displaying virtual reality," recalls Kovář.

The virtual reality experienced by the end user represents only a part of the solution. The researchers had to build their own server facilities, as well as software to read the data from the machine itself and ensure that the data was available in real time. "We built everything from scratch and it is our own solution," confirms Kovář.

Customers seem to be satisfied so far. And researchers are also happy. "New technologies find it hard to win customers. And this is the kind of technology that the company would never come up with on its own. They would never have imagined that such a thing could be created. That is why the biggest award for me is that they are willing to use our solutions," says Kovář.

Marathon instead of sprint

But now he and his team are facing the challenge of not letting success slip through their fingers and, at the same time, combining it with their work in Campus. "Customers logically expect service, ideally 24/7. This can cause problems with the workload of staff in the teaching process. So now we are looking for some balance," admits Kovář.

One way could be to establish a spin-off company under the Twineality brand. Kovář sees several advantages in this, one of which is more transparent cooperation with industrial partners. "In my opinion, a university institute is not a typical supplier of software solutions for industry. I cannot imagine that, for example, we would sell a long-term license and then support it for five years with companies paying the maintenance fees," Kovář explains.

The established practice of collaboration between academia and industry is exactly the opposite, the company comes with the problem and the researchers offer a solution. On the contrary, the team of the Institute of Production Machines strives for long-term cooperation. "However, long-term cooperation is not completely established in our environment. I understand that looking for ways is not easy. Gradual steps are being done, but it runs slowly. And in the area of software, you do not have much time to wait, in a year a company will surely emerge that would offer exactly the same what we are doing today," Kovář emphasizes the need to keep ahead of the competition.

Kovář also met potential competitors and customers at this year's International Engineering Fair in Brno. At the BUT stand, they introduced another new technology called AROS (Augmented Reality Operator Support). Even in this case, the industrial partners were interested, but from the beginning they decided to set a different strategy of cooperation. "We are now creating so-called use-cases, i.e. the most common use cases that we can offer, and we are designing them to cover as many customers as possible. We save energy by not making all tailor-made solutions, ," Kovář believes.

The fair was not only an opportunity for them to make themselves visible, but also an assurance that it makes sense to transfer the results of research into practice. "For me, the best reward was to see visitors who originally had no interest in applying the technology. But when they tried it out and saw how user-friendly our solution was, it was clear that they were intrigued. I enjoy programming a lot, but this was at least as satisfying," concludes Kovář.