Cluster 1 focuses on the investigation, exploration, and creation of adaptation strategies for changeability. Since cyber-physical production systems (CPPS) are highly flexible, the need for technical assistance for actors which is aligned with the current state of the system arises. With such assistance, that is fitted to current situation, or in other words is adapted to the situation, it is possible to enable the human actors and with that also the system itself to achieve optimal performance. Further, changing from conventional stable and long-term production to highly flexible and short-lived production systems also requires adaptation and support on different time scales:

• Immediate adaptation is achieved by implementing layered supervisory control schemes and providing feedback as an essential feature of usable systems. 
• Intermediate adaptation considers adapting the structure of the technical process achieved by modular CPPS approaches. Adaptation of the interfaces for human-machine cooperation may take advantage of an increased scope of interaction modalities and techniques, from mouse, keyboard, and graphical user interfaces to Natural User Interfaces or Reality-based Interaction.
• Long-term adaptation is achieved by feedback into the machine design and by design measures that are conducive for human health and trust.

Within this cluster, the research projects of Marc Satkowski, Martin Gebert, Nazanin Hamedi, and Florian Pelzer adress adaptation strategies on different time scales and from different perspectives:

Understanding Visualizations in Augmented Reality

This research focuses on investigating and exploring how information visualization in immersive environments can be used for data analysis processes. The goal of this work is to (1) create effective and conducive information visualization systems for Augmented Reality (AR) devices, usable by operators of CPPS and data analysists but also to (2) explore promising parameters usable for the design of adaptive or responsive visualizations and systems. Especially the diverse set of possible influencing factors of the users, tasks, system, but also the environment itself are of interest within this project.

To achieve this, the research project investigated (1) the competence of the users to work with visualization (visualization literacy), (2) the influence of the visual background, (3) exploration of alternative placement areas in AR (ceiling and floor) with regard to user preferences and ergonmics, and (4) the creation of immersive analytic systems that make use of well-known input and outpur devices, such as smartphones and tablets.

Virtual Reality Representation of Digital Prototypes by a Meta-model

Martin Gebert focused on investigated the process of product and system design. For that the existing virtual scene graphs of such system is extended by the introduction of a user representation. With that, is possible to also take the human factors, but also information of flexible products into account.

This combination enables the definition of relationships between product and user elements within the process of design reviews. Further, since possible interactions between humans and the system can already explored prior to building such production systems, it enables (1) virtual human-machine interaction testing, (2) the access to human beavhiours to drive user understanding and product adaptation, and lastly (3) new analysis options for studies with sociotechnical systems.

Task-oriented Navigation Hierarchies in Changeable Modular Plants

This research focuses on hierarchical description of modular plants. This includes not only the decomposition hierarchy, in which the topology of the plant is described, but also the abstraction hierarchy explaining the behavior (phenomena) of the plant. Indeed, this project aims at developing a knowledge graph of a modular plant, consisting of a A Box (instances) and a T Box (ontologies).

This knowledge graph would be helpful in many adaptation scenarios of modular plants. For example, for fault diagnosis purposes, it can identify the root cause of the problem and therefore help the operator make a better decision, or it can be used to provide information about the active automation system and by presenting this information to the operator, he will be more aware of the situation.     

Design and evaluation of intermodular safety strategies for modular process plants

The decisive characteristic of a modular plant is its flexible adaptability to different market situations. There are basically two strategies available for this: The far-reaching adaptation of the production characteristics by exchanging modules or the more finely tuned adaptation of the module characteristics by exchanging a sub-module.  Both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages. From the perspective of plant safety, both interventions represent a potential source of danger, since dangerous alternating effects between process and equipment can occur or safety systems are modified during the exchange.

The challenges that arise from the pairing of functional safety and modular process plants can be summarized as follows: The policies, procedures, technologies, and competencies developed and established for fixed equipment are not able to adequately address and mitigate the risks of the highly variable modular equipment in the process industry.
In this research, we therefore investigate the adaptation of modular process plants by adapting or replacing process modules from a functional safety perspective. This will involve:

• Adapted workflows for the engineering of safety systems in Modular Analgene are developed,
• an architectural concept for the installation of safety systems on modules and in the process plant will be developed,
• a reference implementation will be created by building a process plant, in order to finally
• investigate the operator tasks during the adaptation and replacement of modules and sub-modules and to identify necessary competencies and training.

within the research-framework developed.