Wireless for the factory: The Wi-Fact analysis

Wireless in shop-floors is a bet: it outlines the possibility of making automation more flexible and to simplify plant reconfiguration. However, the specific context subtends several challenging requirements, which the available off-the-shelf solutions are not 100%–ready to cope with. By the way, the potential benefits of wireless for automation are so significant that it is worth investigating novel techniques to enforce the available wireless transceivers, so as to make them suitable for factories. The Italian regional project Wi-Fact is putting under close scrutiny the context of wireless automation to identify the most significant threats and proposing solutions to stem them. This paper take stock of the project achievements at its mid-term turning point.