Edinburgh Napier University

  This paper examines the opportunities to apply industry 4.0 technology to practical applications, with a specific focus on sustainability and resource efficiency in industrial environments. The main objective of this paper is to design and implement a lab-based demonstrator that explores an industrial robotic arm's power consumption and energy efficiency from an Industry 4.0 perspective. The demonstration aims to highlight the potential benefits of horizontal and vertical integration of data, enabling improved information flow across industrial environments. A 6 degrees of freedom industrial robotic arm is programmed to assemble a 4-component product, and data is collected to analyse payload and operational speed effects on product assembly cycle time and energy consumption. The findings from this research lead to a discussion on how the data, which is typically confined within the robotic arm, can be unlocked to improve energy efficiencies through industry 4.0 methods and technologies. This, in turn, results in the development of smarter robotics with enhance energy efficiency.