Developing an AI-enabled IIoT platform -- Lessons learned from early use case validation
This addresses infrastructure challenges for AI adoption in industrial production, but it is incremental as it builds on existing IIoT standards.
The paper tackles the lack of flexible AI integration in industrial IoT platforms by introducing the IIP-Ecosphere platform, which uses a low-code approach and was evaluated through a demonstrator for visual quality inspection, though no concrete performance numbers are provided.
For a broader adoption of AI in industrial production, adequate infrastructure capabilities are crucial. This includes easing the integration of AI with industrial devices, support for distributed deployment, monitoring, and consistent system configuration. Existing IIoT platforms still lack required capabilities to flexibly integrate reusable AI services and relevant standards such as Asset Administration Shells or OPC UA in an open, ecosystem-based manner. This is exactly what our next level Intelligent Industrial Production Ecosphere (IIP-Ecosphere) platform addresses, employing a highly configurable low-code based approach. In this paper, we introduce the design of this platform and discuss an early evaluation in terms of a demonstrator for AI-enabled visual quality inspection. This is complemented by insights and lessons learned during this early evaluation activity.