Real-time combination of material flow simulation, digital twins of manufacturing cells, an AGV and a mixed-reality application

The integration of material flow simulation and digital planning solutions raises new challenges for the methodology and technical implementation of simulation models. The paper describes the use of a material flow simulation, which is controlling an AGV and interacting with digital twins of manufacturing cells. The digital twins determine the exact machining times. In addition, a mixed-reality application visualizes the entire system, while the communication via MQTT ensures a quasi-synchronous behavior of the different models and the AGV. The paper provides a literature review on similar solutions, describes the concept of our approach and specifies the technical implementation.