Research · Digital infrastructure

The infrastructure and test environments

DRIVE PR develops and demonstrates on real communication, computing and laboratory resources at Chalmers, RISE and the partners' own sites.

Digital infrastructure is at the centre of DRIVE PR: the technologies, systems and resources that store, communicate, compute, manage and organise data, together with the fundamental resources for testing. New requirements emerge on that infrastructure as manufacturing changes, and new capacities are offered as the technology advances. Several of them disrupt present ways of operating in manufacturing in general, and in product realisation in particular.

The consortium is well placed to address this. Chalmers eCommons offers access to and support for Chalmers' infrastructure resources and is the entry point to national and international initiatives, including C3SE, NAISS and EuroHPC. The CASE laboratory at Chalmers, for autonomous systems, has a 5G installation used for research and demonstration of wireless technologies for production. AstaZero provides test resources and activities for connected and autonomous vehicle testing. Industrial partners provide real, or realistic, datasets for research and demonstration studies.

Built on twenty-five years of Wingquist Laboratory research

DRIVE PR builds on the Wingquist Laboratory's experience of virtual and digital product realisation and brings in research on data-driven product realisation that makes use of the advances in digital infrastructure. Within the project, Chalmers also invests in additional sensing and computing laboratory equipment.

Where data-driven product realisation runs

Production, engineering and field each have their own communication and computing needs. Data-driven product realisation is the layer that connects them.

ProductionProduction and quality, remanufacturing

EngineeringDesign and verification

FieldOperation and service, predictive maintenance

Communication infrastructure

Industrial IoT over 5G, 6G and Wi-FiReal-time monitoring and control

Tools and agents as cloud servicesInteroperability between engineering systems

5G and 6G connectivityRemote monitoring, over-the-air updates

Data-driven product realisationthe integrating layer

Computing infrastructure

Edge computationDigital twins, quality control, process optimisation

High-performance computingAI model training and inference, synthetic data generation, simulation and optimisation

Fleet analyticsMonitoring, usage learning, predictive maintenance

What the project has access to

Communication infrastructure

AstaZero. RISE's test environment for connected and autonomous vehicles, with 5G coverage, for field testing and demonstrations.

CASE laboratory. The Chalmers laboratory for autonomous systems, with a 5G and Wi-Fi installation for wireless production research.

Computing infrastructure

Chalmers eCommons. Access and support for Chalmers' computing resources, and the gateway to C3SE, NAISS and EuroHPC.

Alvis. GPU cluster for AI and machine learning: model training, inference and synthetic data generation.

Vera. CPU cluster for simulation and optimisation at scale.

Research laboratories

Virtual Development Laboratory. The Wingquist Laboratory's environment for virtual product realisation and visualisation.

Production Systems Laboratory. Physical production laboratory at Chalmers for testing automation and process concepts.

Research group laboratories. The laboratories of the participating Chalmers research groups.

Industry laboratory resources

Factory testbeds. Production environments at partner sites for demonstrations under real industrial requirements.

Production data. Real, or realistic, datasets from manufacturing, inspection and operation.

PLM, CAD and measurement systems. The authoritative engineering tools and measurement systems that decision support must connect to.