Continuous Integration and Deployment in Manufacturing Process Design: A Use Case for Safe and Secure Human-Robot Interaction

Abstract

Collaborative robots (cobots) are one possible solution for efficiently automating the trend towards lot size 1 in production. Cobots enable humans and robots to work together without a protective fence. In addition, they can also be reprogrammed relatively easily by non-experts, due to their simple user interfaces. Nevertheless, reprogramming of a robot on the shop floor always results in a certain amount of downtime. One possible solution to reduce or even eliminate this downtime is provided by the continuous integration and deployment approach (CI/CD) from software development. The goal of CI/CD is to accelerate software development, to be able to react quickly to changes and to make software development and deployment as efficient as possible. This is implemented by continuously adapting the software, provided as short-cycle software updates. Therefore, automation is also an important aspect of CI/CD, such as automating the testing, the deployment, etc. In the domain of safety-critical industrial systems, CI/CD is currently still in its infancy, especially on the shop floor level. This paper presents a novel use case that illustrates the use of CI/CD for the continuous adaptation of cobot applications on the shop floor, thus reducing the downtime and increasing the production efficiency. However, the use of this technology in safety-critical systems also opens up new attack vectors. Hence, it is also shown how test automation and the open-source tool Jenkins can be used for automatic safety testing and monitoring of cobots to reduce potential safety and security risks. This paper therefore contributes to the research in the field of manufacturing process design by presenting a new application for improving the efficiency, safety and security of frequently changing collaborative human-robot interaction processes.