5 Permanent real-time diagnostics: whether it is for monitoring the AquaJellies … … or for the process reliability at a waterworks. Collective behaviour: The AquaJellies show how the autonomous actions of individual systems can lead to an overall system. Impulses for the automation of tomorrow As a worldwide partner to the manufacturing and process industry, Festo's core competence is to look for new solutions for the production and working worlds of the future. The AquaJellies help developers by acting as technology bearers for the automation technology of tomorrow and beyond. In the field of process automation, the range of solutions extends from simple components like valves and sensors, drive units and control systems through to ready-to-install systems and integrated automation concepts – in all project phases of engineering through to the operation and maintenance of plants. Autonomous systems in the water technology sector The task of self-organisation can already be found in wastewater technology today, for example when it comes to channelling collected rainwater from several decentralised rain overflow basins into a central sewage treatment plant. At the same time, condition monitoring allows efficient operations management, servicing and maintenance. With the aid of permanent real-time data transmission and diagnostics, the whole plant can be controlled and monitored from the sewage works' remote control centre. If you transfer the principle of the information structures present in the AquaJellies to the control system for the rain overflow basins, the communication including permanent calibration of the condition monitoring of the decentralised units would be conceivable. Energy self-sufficient automation concepts of decentralised water reservoirs in the water management field are already picking up on these ideas to some extent. Intelligent components in the factory of the future In the factory of the future it will be increasingly common for decentralised systems or components to organise themselves and thus take on orders at a superordinate control level. The foundation of these future production systems are intelligent components – self-contained, autonomously functioning mechatronic modules. Information and communication technologies are expected to merge with classic industrial processes. The AquaJellies are already helping to illustrate these kinds of networked overall systems.
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