Starting this discusion to get input, feedback or tips for my digital twin research project. My goal is to use unreal engine for engineering simulation purposes. These simulations will help to make FMEA studies and design optimasations of production lines and factories easier and faster to iterate. These simulations would then preferably be used as HMI for daily operations.
I am a freelance engineer and all to often I see projects were there is miscommunication due to lack of visualisation of the problem. Gaming engines offer tremendous opportunities to help better connect with different departments to build production lines and machines. After some reading I came up with a plan to test out and help customers build better machines faster and cheaper.
The plan for now:
Create basic CAD objects using Shapr3D(Siemens parasolid powered tool, intuitive and good for fast designing)
Import the CAD into unreal engine (Datasmith import tool)
Setup blueprints which allow PLC communication that will control machine movement in unreal engine (this will be the hard part as I believe custom plugin will be needed)
For the first phase of the plan I will model a KUKA IONTEC, a 6 axis robot.
Here is a shot of the cast iron baseplate I modeled:
For a robot arm I would focus on implementing two joint ik systems for segments.
It also depends if the plc controller would pass in specific motor rotations,or if would it just be start / stop / rotation direction signals.
You also need to identify the protocol of the PLC (does it use CIP).
Does it communicate via rs232 / com / lan etc
Then build a plugin to bridge with the protocol (probably need a handshake to establish connection) and then translate the information to unreal.
Thanks for your reply, do you have some starting material I can watch to learn more about this? There is a lot of info out there and it is a bit overwhelming.
As for the PLC control, the idea is to use IOT devices that send data packages with specified output. The IOT device would be on the machine capturing the output data. This way I avoid linking protocols to unreal engine directly.
Azure cloud would be my preferred way to link different devices to different CAD as production lines often have multiple suppliers.
When tackling physical interfaces (like mbus or direct engine controls) I usually go by documentation provided by the parts manufacturer (haven’t done PLC’s yet but other hardware interfaces)
I’m guessing there will be more inbuilt watchdog’s that need to be handled so accidents don’t occur on assembly lines.
I’d see what standards Kuka uses. Seems they offer clients a HMI: KUKA.HMI zenon DEV
but I’m not sure if it’s isolated to a flashy user interface or if it has an api behind it.
You could try contacting them directly to see if they have an SDK on request.
Jup, it always depends on the manufacturer of the machine/robot hence i’m not keen on linking it directly into unreal. I’m not after direct engine controls, these are handled through KUKA API.
At one of my clients the KUKA is integrated into a main program (PLC) through API. My goal for this project would be to just extract and send preprogrammed positions and would prefer to do this via the cloud as this will allow the application to be mobile. It is also easy to simulate and no need for an actual robot to test the unreal setup.
I have been searching around the forum and youtube to find out how best to tackle this and understood I need skeletal mesh. Found out I need a new step between building the CAD and importing to Unreal. Seems like blender software will be a necessary step. Complete noob here…
Just a small update on the project before the Christmas holidays start. As I discovered I will need to make a blender step to create the FBX file to import skeleton mesh for the robot.
I completed the simplified model for the axis 2-3 arm:
Next steps will be to complete the simplified robot model and create the FBX file with skeleton to start animating in unreal.
Continued my research on how to create IOT link through azure and guessing this will be the hard part. If any of you have experience or have some pointers feel free to drop your insights here.
Another small update, finished the basic animations and decided to make the scene more factory minded.
The blue wire running down the robot still needs setup/fixing. The tutorials on control rig mention some bone IK structures I could use to animate the wire.
