Applications of HPCN in manufacturing industry

Abstract

In this work, we will consider industrial applications which illustrate two aspects of HPCN. These applications are AMROSE, a system for automatically welding complex curved structures on the basis of a CAD model, and SMART PAINTER, an automatic task curve planning system for spray painting robots on the basis of a CAD description of the surface to be painted and a mathematical model of the painting process. Both applications, of which AMROSE is a working prototype welding the world's largest container ships, are characterized by computationally intensive numerical simulation, complex optimization, control and sensor integration operating in a heterogeneous multi-processor network. In the body of the paper we discuss briefly the software architectures of both applications, the numerical algorithms used in the simulations and the distributed hardware system. We conclude with some speculations of how applying HPCN in manufacturing industry will lead to integrating the production process in the global information society.