Enhancing Safety and Privacy in Industry 4.0: The ICE Laboratory Case Study

The revolutionary technologies behind Industry 4.0 have opened a new era for manufacturing: connected and autonomous machines, collaborative robotics, and monitoring techniques are spreading to increase productivity and sustainability. From the workers’ perspective, they bring new safety threats but also opportunities to solve old ones, while concerns about workers’ privacy arise due to the increase of data sensed and transferred from the shop floor. This paper presents the results of a research project addressing the prediction of dangerous conditions through workplace monitoring with privacy guarantees. This work is driven by a realistic approach starting from the fact that it is entirely centered on a real 14-meter production line equipped with an extensive array of top-tier devices, including robotic arms, autonomous mobile robots, a reconfigurable moving belt, a multi-camera system, and a highly efficient data transport and computation infrastructure. This project shows safety and privacy achievements over six representative use cases such as man-on-the-ground, environmental events (e.g., fire incidents), workers’ errors that can lead to potential accidents, compliance of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), and gatherings restrictions. The benefits of this study extend to stakeholders such as manufacturers and workers offering safety systems that can be deployed in industrial settings while addressing privacy concerns and providing compliance with regulations. The industrial laboratory at the heart of this study represents with realism a dynamic and interconnected Industry 4.0 and 5.0 environment.