Automatic simulation model implementation of robotic production cells in a 3D manufacturing simulation environment

Abstract Due to the high demand placed on today’s production systems, such as high flexibility or low cost and time requirements, simulations tools continue to gain more importance. With the help of simulation tools, complex production systems can be designed as well as examined in terms of feasibility before their actual physical existence in order to make them controllable and to avoid possible cost-intensive errors. However, creating and implementing a simulation model manually takes a considerable amount of time and expert knowledge regarding the used simulation tool. A promising approach for this is to automate the implementation of simulation models using existing data about product, processes and resources (PPR-Triple). Therefore, the simulation model should represent the layout as well as the executed processes and workflows. For this purpose, the presented paper focuses on the automatic workflow and process transfer to the 3D simulation environment of Visual Components. For the representation of the imported layout and process data AutomationML (AML) is extended and utilized as a data exchange format.