Robopac is one of the seven brands of Aetna Group, the world leader in the packaging sector, specialised in end-line solutions. Robopac was established in 1982 and produces machines for wrapping with stretchable film.

By participating to Change2Twin, Robopac is committed to use the technology of Digital Twin in order to ensure that its wrapping technology may guarantee a perfect product stabilisation and minimise the plastic material used for this purpose, aiming to the double advantage of saving consumable and reducing environmental impact.

Robopac addresses the following topics within Change2Twin:

• generation and validation of the virtual model of a wrapped pallet (with Unibo)
• generation of the Digital Twin of a wrapped pallet under realistic load conditions (with Unibo)
• feasibility about the utilisation of edge and/or cloud architecture for a real-time utilisation of the Digital Twin (with TTTech, Unibo and Cloudbroker).

The aim of the pilot project is to generate and validate the virtual simulation of the physical behaviour of a wrapped pallet, and then using it as the core engine for a Digital Twin. This model will be used by the customers of Robopac machines during the wrapping process: the Digital Twin will simulate the mechanical behaviour of pallet under realistic load conditions, in order to optimize the amount of the wrapping film allowing the customer to decrease the impact on the environment, in agreement with the objectives of European Green Deal.

Between the reality of the stresses during real life transportation and the Digital Twin developed in the project, the ROBOPAC-Techlab assets represent the  “Physical Twin” that enables the validation of the complete cycle:

Digital Twin – Physical Twin – Real Transport Correlation:

With this approach the Digital Twin is the virtual model governed with the mathematical relationships that translate the real behaviour  in the virtual world, while the real transport case which is happening in the real world on trucks, trains, ships and planes when transporting goods is the phenomenon that the Digital Twin is trying to mimic.

The validation between the two developments through a “Physical Twin” that is represented by motion platforms at one, two or six degrees of freedom which replicate the stresses and strains of the real world phenomena, allowing the scientific investigations to transpose from the real dimension (Real transport) to the laboratory dimension (Physical Twin) and then to the Digital Twin (Virtualization).