Experimenting Industrial Internet with a mobile robot: Expanding human cognitive functions

Industrial Internet can be viewed as a big opportunity for industry. A large variety of Industrial Internet solutions will change the role of humans in industrial processes. This paper presents our practical experiences using Industrial Internet with a mobile robot. Several sensors embedded in the robot enabled its use for fire detection. The robot was able to analyze data collected from sensors or send the data to cloud computing systems for analysis. Our experiments showed that mobile robots can be utilized in condition-based monitoring and maintenance. The mobile robot can be part of the remote monitoring system when sensor information requires enrichment with visual abilities. Our study also examined the impact of the Industrial Internet on human activities in an industrial use case. The study showed potential opportunities and how it will challenge the employees.