Digitalization of a standard robot arm toward 4th industrial revolution

Increasing the productivity while maintaining the quality of manufactured products is essential in the present industrial context. In this sense, the use of robotic devices in manufacturing facilities is increasing due to the advantages related to flexibility, repeatability, and low-cost, when compared to machining centers. However, a lack of digital connectivity between machines within the manufacturing system is a fact. Thus, in this paper, a low-cost instrumentation, sensing, and cloud technologies are proposed to monitor robotized manufacturing processes by digitalization of traditional robot arms. As a case study, a drilling process of different aircraft materials is performed to prove the digital integration. So, the results showed an interesting potential of the proposed methodology, especially in the case of material removal processes performed by robotized cells that are still challenging for conventional robots due to the lack of rigidity of their components.